The Atalissa 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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77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 76° in 1989.
Atalissa’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedar Valley Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 6 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 Atalissa reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pike Run, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,460 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atalissa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atalissa has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Atalissa normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1990; the record low 5°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Muscatine, 12 miles south-southeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
