The Morrison 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 75° in 1911.
Morrison’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian System undivided (dolostone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 24 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 0.6 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 Morrison reaches the Gulf of America by way of French Creek, Rock Creek, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,510 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morrison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morrison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Morrison normally reaches 48° and falls to 29°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Morrison, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
