The Earlham 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2012.
Earlham’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
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 49×. 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.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 2 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 Earlham reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Raccoon, the North Raccoon, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,570 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Earlham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Earlham 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 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Earlham normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Winterset 4 N, 8 miles southeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
