The Blockton plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Showers likely
79° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1941.
Blockton’s center stands about 1,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lansing Group (limestone, shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, mudstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Blockton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,700 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Blockton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blockton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Blockton normally reaches 50° and falls to 28°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Mount Ayr, 14 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
