The Birch Tree 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
6.23 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1940. The next wettest, 5.04 inches, fell in 2015.
Birch Tree’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Roubidoux Formation (sandstone, chert), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 Birch Tree reaches the Gulf of America by way of Birch Creek, Spring Creek, the Eleven Point, the Black River, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,060 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Birch Tree; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Birch Tree has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Birch Tree normally reaches 57° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 1990; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.10 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Summersville 3 SE, 12 miles northwest, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
