The Burr Oak 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
75° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1953.
Burr Oak’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,340 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Galena Group and Platteville Formation (dolostone, limestone), from the Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. 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. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 0.7 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 Burr Oak reaches the Gulf of America by way of Silver Creek, the Upper Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Burr Oak; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Burr Oak has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Burr Oak normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 2025; the record low −7°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.08 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Decorah, 11 miles south-southeast, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
