The Blairstown 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.
3.98 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1906. The next wettest, 3.82 inches, fell in 1928.
Blairstown’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 130 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.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 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 Blairstown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Creek, the South Grand, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,540 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 Blairstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blairstown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Blairstown normally reaches 57° and falls to 34°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Clinton, 15 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.