The Geneva 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.
76° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2012.
Geneva’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,030 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kinderhookian formations (dolostone, limestone, siltstone), from the Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old.
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 59×. 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, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 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 Geneva reaches the Gulf of America by way of Maynes Creek, the West Fork Cedar, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,660 river miles.
1,410 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Geneva; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Geneva has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Geneva normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low −6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hampton, 7 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.