The Gowrie 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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78° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 76° in 2012.
Gowrie’s center stands about 1,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Cherokee Group and Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 347 million years old. About 2 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 Gowrie reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tank Pond Creek, West Buttrick Creek, Buttrick Creek, the North Raccoon, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gowrie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gowrie has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Gowrie normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 72°, in 1964; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Rockwell City, 19 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
