The Fredonia 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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−2° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 2° in 1940.
Fredonia’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Famennian formations (shale, siltstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 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.
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 Fredonia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,440 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fredonia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fredonia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Fredonia normally reaches 49° and falls to 27°. The record high is 76°, in 1958; the record low 0°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Columbus Junction, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
