The Excelsior Springs 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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80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1981. Next is 75° in 1990.
Excelsior Springs’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Nebo Hill, about 950 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleasanton Group (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 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 Excelsior Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Fork Fishing, the Fishing, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,520 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 Excelsior Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Excelsior Springs has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Excelsior Springs normally reaches 54° and falls to 32°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.43 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1981 at Smithville Lake, 18 miles west-northwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
