The Blackburn 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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3.54 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1940. The next wettest, 2.74 inches, fell in 2015.
Blackburn’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 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 Blackburn reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elm Branch, the Salt Fork, the Blackwater, the Lamine, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,430 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 Blackburn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blackburn has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Blackburn normally reaches 55° and falls to 32°. The record high is 81°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Sweet Springs, 10 miles south-southeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
