The Kirkwood 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
78° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 76° in 1999.
Kirkwood’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Meppen Limestone, Fern Glen Formation, and Burlington-Keokuk Limestone, from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old.
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.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 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.
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 Kirkwood reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Henderson Creek, Henderson Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,400 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kirkwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kirkwood has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Kirkwood normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.27 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Monmouth 4 NW, 5 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
