The Council Bluffs 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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83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 76° in 1964.
Council Bluffs’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bronson Group (limestone, shale), from the Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. 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, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Council Bluffs reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,760 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Council Bluffs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Council Bluffs has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Council Bluffs normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Omaha Area threaded record (Omaha Eppley Airfield, 4 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
