The Moran 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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83° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 81° in 1999.
Moran’s center stands about 1,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kansas City Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Moran reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Creek, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,280 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 Moran; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moran has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Moran normally reaches 57° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.04 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Iola 1 W, 14 miles west, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
