The Clayton 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
85° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 83° in 2016.
Clayton’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 190 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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Clayton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Deer Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clayton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Clayton normally reaches 56° and falls to 38°. The record high is 81°, in 1971; the record low 13°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.86 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1874 from the St Louis Area threaded record (St Louis Lambert International Airport, 8 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
