The Elmer 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.
0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 2° in 2019.
Elmer’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 220 ft: 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 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 Elmer reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Chariton, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,450 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 Elmer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elmer has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elmer normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Kirksville Regional Airport, 11 miles north-northeast, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.