The Platte 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
3° on Nov. 13, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 6° in 1911.
Platte City’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Knob, about 1,120 ft, 10 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. 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, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 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 Platte City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,570 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 Platte City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Platte City has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Platte City normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 81°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.80 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Kansas City Area threaded record (Kansas City International Airport, 6 miles south-southeast, 180 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
