The Mercer 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−5° on Nov. 13, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 3° in 2019.
Mercer’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kansas City 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 63×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 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 Mercer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Muddy Creek, the Thompson, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,540 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 Mercer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mercer has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mercer normally reaches 51° and falls to 30°. The record high is 79°, in 1897; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Princeton, 8 miles south-southwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
