The Frederika 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.
75° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 74° in 1953.
Frederika’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 90 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 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.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone, 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 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 440 to 445 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 Frederika reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wapsipinicon and the Mississippi: about 1,690 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Frederika; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Frederika has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Frederika normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at New Hampton, 11 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.