The Three Creeks 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.
4.19 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1957. The next wettest, 2.96 inches, fell in 2003.
Three Creeks’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tavern Rock, about 880 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Holocene series (clay, silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Three Creeks reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,230 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Three Creeks; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Three Creeks 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 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Three Creeks normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 80°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Weldon Spring Nws, 19 miles east-northeast, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.