The Russell Springs 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.
Chance of showers
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82° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 81° in 2007.
Russell Springs’s center stands about 2,920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,850 ft to 3,060 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Butte, about 3,320 ft, 14 miles 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.6 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 Russell Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Spring Creek, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,130 river miles.
Lake on the way: Cedar Bluff Reservoir.
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 Russell Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Russell Springs 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 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Russell Springs normally reaches 56° and falls to 25°. The record high is 81°, in 2007; the record low −4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.23 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Russell Springs 3 N, 3 miles north, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
