The Rolla 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.
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
86° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 1930.
Rolla’s center stands about 3,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,260 ft to 3,370 ft, a difference of 110 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 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.
Rolla has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° 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 Rolla normally reaches 60° and falls to 28°. The record high is 85°, in 1930; the record low −6°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.27 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Richfield, 13 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
