The Lowell 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
5.47 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 4.29 inches, fell in 1958.
Lowell’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mound, about 990 ft, 7 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Chert, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
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 Lowell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,160 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lowell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lowell has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Lowell normally reaches 58° and falls to 37°. The record high is 82°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.25 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Columbus, 11 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
