The Montrose 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.
1° on Nov. 16, 1932, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is 1° in 1940.
Montrose’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 770 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cherokee Group - Cabaniss Subgroup, Krebs Subgroup (shale, sandstone, siltstone), 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, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. 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 6 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 Montrose reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bear Creek, Deepwater Creek, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,520 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 Montrose; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Montrose 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 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Montrose normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at Appleton City, 5 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.