How is my lost phone syncing without showing me its location? Google's Find My Phone

[Android Central Question]

I lost my phone yesterday. I thought I left it in a friend's car, but it turns out that I likely dropped it on the 20 foot walk it took me to get from her car to my house. I didn't know this until the next morning, though.
Once we realized that it wasn't in her car, I turned to Google's device locator. The phone's last known location reads as being across the street and several houses down from where I live, and the time stamp as of this moment is 24 hours ago. However, it last synced 5 hours ago.
If it is still syncing up, how am I not getting any update on it's location?
And if it has to connect to wifi in order to send a location, how is it possible for it to ping a location a decent distance outside of the wifi zone in my house? Currently there is no other activity on my phone, and near as I can tell it isn't being used.

 

[VidJunky]

It doesn't need WiFi to update unless you don't have a data plan and only use it over WiFi. As far as the location and 24 hours, how long has it been missing? If found would anyone be able to get into the phone? Disabling location could account for that because I don't think it can accurately locate your device over data alone, maybe over WiFi alone because WiFi has a static location. Maybe. Have you tried ringing the phone or posting a message to the lock screen?