The Versailles 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
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.
Versailles’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country.
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 51×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Versailles reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Straight Fork, North Moreau Creek, the Moreau, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,400 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 Versailles; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Versailles 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 Versailles 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 east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
