The Puxico 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
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.21 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1939. The next wettest, 3.58 inches, fell in 2011.
Puxico’s center stands about 380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 500 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Childers Hill, about 730 ft, 10 miles northwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 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 Puxico reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, the Saint Francis and the Mississippi: about 980 river miles.
690 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Puxico; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Puxico has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Puxico normally reaches 56° and falls to 37°. The record high is 83°, in 1955; the record low 11°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.51 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Wappapello Dam, 7 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
