The Elsberry 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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6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 16° in 1995.
Elsberry’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Springston Knob, about 960 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Leemon Formation, Maquoketa Group, Cape Limestone, Kimmswick Limestone, Noix-Cyrene Limestone, Maquoketa Shale, from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Elsberry reaches the Gulf of America by way of Old Kings Lake Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,230 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elsberry; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elsberry has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Elsberry normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Clarksville L&D 24, 16 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
