The Cascade 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.
73° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 72° in 1964.
Cascade’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chimney Rock, about 970 ft, 6 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hopkinton, Blanding, Tete Des Morts, Mosalem formations (dolostone), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. 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. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cascade reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Maquoketa, the Maquoketa and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cascade; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cascade has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Cascade normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Cascade, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.