The Morning Sun 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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77° on Nov. 17, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 76° in 1999.
Morning Sun’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Augusta Group (dolostone, limestone), from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 63×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 347 million years old. About 0.3 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 Morning Sun reaches the Gulf of America by way of Roff Creek, Otter Creek, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,440 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morning Sun; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morning Sun has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morning Sun normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at New Boston Dam 17, 12 miles northeast, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
