The Ackley 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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78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2012.
Ackley’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kinderhookian formations (dolostone, limestone, siltstone), from the Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 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 64×. 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, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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.
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 Ackley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Fork South Beaver Creek, South Beaver Creek, Beaver Creek, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ackley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ackley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Ackley normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Iowa Falls, 11 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
