The Iowa City 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
2° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 6° in 2014.
Iowa City’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 0.8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 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. 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 Iowa City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ralston Creek, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,480 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Iowa City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Iowa City has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Iowa City normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Iowa City Municipal Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
