The Bonne Terre 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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3° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 8° in 1894.
Bonne Terre’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stono Mountain, about 1,660 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Elvins Group - (including Derby-Doerun Dolomite, Davis Formation), Bonneterre Dolomite (dolostone, shale, siltstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 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 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, shale, siltstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 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 Bonne Terre reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Big River, the Meramec and the Mississippi: about 1,260 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bonne Terre; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bonne Terre has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Bonne Terre normally reaches 55° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 1993; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 4.20 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Potosi 4 SW, 16 miles west, 340 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
