The Blythedale 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 76° in 2025.
Blythedale’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleasanton Group (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 56×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 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 Blythedale reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Fork Big Creek, Big Creek, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,580 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 Blythedale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blythedale has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Blythedale normally reaches 51° and falls to 30°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.56 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Lamoni, 10 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
