The Malcom 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 1948.
Malcom’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 1 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 Malcom reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Bear Creek, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,570 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Malcom; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Malcom has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Malcom normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.21 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Grinnell 3 SW, 10 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
