The Columbia 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
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
7° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 13° in 2018.
Columbia’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 790 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cherokee Group - Cabaniss Subgroup, Krebs Subgroup (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. 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 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 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 Columbia reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hinkson Creek, Perche Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,350 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Columbia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Columbia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Columbia normally reaches 55° and falls to 37°. The record high is 79°, in 2025; the record low 13°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.18 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Columbia U Of M, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
