The Chester 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
73° on Nov. 11, 1949, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 72° in 2012.
Chester’s center stands about 1,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maquoketa formation (shale, dolostone), from the Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 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 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 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 Chester reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Upper Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chester has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Chester normally reaches 41° and falls to 24°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 1900. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Grand Meadow, 18 miles northwest, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
