The Ash 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.
81° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 80° in 1911.
Ash Grove’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,180 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sand Mountain, about 1,210 ft, 3 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 52×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Ash Grove reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Sac, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,620 river miles.
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 Ash Grove; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ash Grove has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Ash Grove normally reaches 58° and falls to 37°. The record high is 78°, in 1973; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1924.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Springfield Area threaded record (Springfield Airport, 12 miles east-southeast, 220 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.