The Phillipsburg 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.
4.21 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1908. The next wettest, 3.65 inches, fell in 1985.
Phillipsburg’s center stands about 1,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country.
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 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 12 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 Phillipsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dousinbury Creek, the Niangua, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,530 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 Phillipsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Phillipsburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Phillipsburg normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 76°, in 1973; the record low 13°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.15 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Marshfield 4 WSW, 19 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.