The Pilot Mound 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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Showers likely
81° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 77° in 2001.
Pilot Mound’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cherokee Group (shale, siltstone), from the Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 11 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 Pilot Mound reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bluff Creek, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,590 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Roberts Creek and Big Creek Pounding Area.
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 Pilot Mound; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pilot Mound has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Pilot Mound normally reaches 48° and falls to 27°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 2.16 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Boone, 10 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
