The Smiths Grove 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.
10° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 11° in 2019.
Smiths Grove’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Prewitts Knob, about 1,080 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis Limestones, undivided, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 42×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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.
Smiths Grove has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Smiths Grove normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 77°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.36 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Mammoth Cave, 7 miles north-northeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.