The Fort Scott 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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3.61 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1894. The next wettest, 3.33 inches, fell in 1958.
Fort Scott’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Guthrie Mountain, about 1,040 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cherokee Group (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Fort Scott reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Marmaton, the Little Osage, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,620 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Scott; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Scott has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Scott normally reaches 57° and falls to 36°. The record high is 81°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Nevada Water Plant, 18 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
