The Des Moines 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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76° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 76° in 2016.
Des Moines’s center stands about 6,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,430 ft to 7,420 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sierra Grande, about 8,700 ft, 5 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Basaltic to andesitic lava flows (basalt, andesite), from the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dacite, andesite, rhyolite. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 140 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Des Moines reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Branch Corrumpa Creek, Corrumpa Creek, the Beaver, the North Canadian, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Canton Lake, Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Des Moines; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Des Moines has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in December. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Capulin, 9 miles west, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
