The Fortescue 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 79° in 2005.
Fortescue’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lookout Mountain, about 1,190 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Holocene series (clay, silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 63×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 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 Fortescue reaches the Gulf of America by way of Old Channel Little Tarkio Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,650 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 Fortescue; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fortescue has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fortescue normally reaches 53° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Falls City Brenner Field, 15 miles west, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
