The Schell 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
1° on Nov. 16, 1932, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is 1° in 1940.
Schell City’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mound, about 920 ft, 5 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Riverton Formation, Burgner Formation (shale, siltstone, mudstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 64×. 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, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 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 Schell City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Miller Branch, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,550 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 Schell City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Schell City 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 Schell City 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, 13 miles north-northeast, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
