The Elmo 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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Showers likely
82° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 1964.
Elmo’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale, siltstone, sandstone), 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 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.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 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 Elmo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Moss Branch, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,680 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 Elmo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elmo has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Elmo normally reaches 51° and falls to 28°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Clarinda, 15 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
