The Moscow 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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3.15 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 1.65 inches, fell in 1972.
Moscow’s center stands about 3,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,010 ft to 3,080 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Loess (silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Moscow reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,540 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 Moscow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moscow has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Moscow normally reaches 58° and falls to 27°. The record high is 86°, in 1894; the record low −9°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ulysses 3 NE, 19 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
