The Sterling 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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3.96 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.49 inches, fell in 1964.
Sterling’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,620 ft to 1,660 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dune Sand, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Sand, silt, clay. 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 5 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Sterling reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bull Creek, Cow Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,390 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 Sterling; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sterling has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Sterling normally reaches 56° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1988; the record low 5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.74 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Sterling, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
