The Drexel 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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5.61 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1944. The next wettest, 4.27 inches, fell in 1985.
Drexel’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 930 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kansas City Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 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 Drexel reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Sugar Creek, the Marais des Cygnes, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,660 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 Drexel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Drexel 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 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Osawatomie, 18 miles west, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
