The Grain Valley 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
8° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 12° in 2014.
Grain Valley’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bowler Hill, about 1,080 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. 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, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 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 Grain Valley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Blue Branch, Sni-A-Bar Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,510 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 Grain Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grain Valley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Grain Valley normally reaches 55° and falls to 35°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Pleasant Hill Wfo, 15 miles south-southwest, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
