The Morse Bluff 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.
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Showers likely
84° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1931.
Morse Bluff’s center stands about 1,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Indian Hill, about 1,510 ft, 9 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 49×. 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, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 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 Morse Bluff reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,830 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 Morse Bluff; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morse Bluff has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morse Bluff normally reaches 50° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 1990; the record low −4°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Fremont, 16 miles east, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
