The McCord Bend 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.
83° on Nov. 13, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 82° in 1964.
McCord Bend’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bread Tray Mountain, about 1,380 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Smithville Dolomite, Powell Dolomite, Cotter Dolomite, Jefferson City Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 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 McCord Bend reaches the Gulf of America by way of Table Rock Lake, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,190 river miles.
Lake on the way: Table Rock Lake.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McCord Bend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McCord Bend has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 McCord Bend normally reaches 59° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 2.71 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Galena, 2 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.