The Pierce City 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.
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81° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 81° in 2022.
Pierce City’s center stands about 1,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Meramecian Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 46×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 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 Pierce City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Clear Creek, Shoal Creek, the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,210 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pierce City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pierce City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Pierce City normally reaches 58° and falls to 37°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.89 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Monett 4 SW, 6 miles south-southeast, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
