The Lucas 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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79° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 77° in 1964.
Lucas’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (shale, limestone), from the Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 7 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 Lucas reaches the Gulf of America by way of White Breast Creek, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,530 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lucas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lucas has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Lucas normally reaches 49° and falls to 27°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Chariton 1 E, 10 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
