The Golden City 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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5.76 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1903. The next wettest, 4.20 inches, fell in 1909.
Golden City’s center stands about 1,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 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 Golden City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Spring, the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,250 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Golden City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Golden City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Golden City normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 4.05 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Lockwood, 8 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
