The Elvaston 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
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3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 5° in 1940.
Elvaston’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Louis Limestone, from the Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 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.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 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 Elvaston reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Fork Bear Creek, Bear Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,350 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elvaston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elvaston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elvaston normally reaches 51° and falls to 33°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.32 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Keokuk L&D 19, 7 miles west, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
