The Sunrise Beach 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.
5.94 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.17 inches, fell in 1985.
Sunrise Beach’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gasconade Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 10 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 Sunrise Beach reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,410 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 Sunrise Beach; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sunrise Beach has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sunrise Beach normally reaches 56° and falls to 36°. The record high is 84°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.22 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Eldon, 16 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.