The La Tour 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.
8° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 12° in 2014.
La Tour’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brookhart Hill, about 1,020 ft, 14 miles west.
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 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, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 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 La Tour reaches the Gulf of America by way of Camp Branch, Big Creek, the South Grand, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,550 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 La Tour; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Tour 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 La Tour 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 northwest, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.