The Missouri Valley 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 2012.
Missouri Valley’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 280 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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Missouri Valley reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Boyer, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,800 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 Missouri Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Missouri Valley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Missouri Valley normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low −6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.17 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Logan 1 WNW, 8 miles north-northeast, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
