The Eldridge 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.
−6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 3° in 1996.
Eldridge’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gower Formation (dolostone, mudstone), from the Silurian, 425 to 434 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 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.
Dolostone, mudstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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. 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 Eldridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hickory Creek, Mud Creek, the Wapsipinicon and the Mississippi: about 1,530 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Eldridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Eldridge has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Eldridge normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 2025; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Davenport Municipal Airport, 3 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.