The La Plata 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 2° in 2019.
La Plata’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 La Plata reaches the Gulf of America by way of Long Branch, the East Fork Little Chariton, the Little Chariton, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,500 river miles.
Lake on the way: Long Branch Lake.
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 La Plata; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Plata has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 La Plata normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Kirksville Regional Airport, 6 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
