The Shell Knob 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
83° on Nov. 13, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 82° in 1964.
Shell Knob’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brother Knobs, about 1,780 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.6 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 Shell Knob reaches the Gulf of America by way of Table Rock Lake, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,170 river miles.
Lake on the way: Table Rock Lake.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shell Knob; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shell Knob has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Shell Knob normally reaches 59° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 2.71 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Galena, 16 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
