The Knierim 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
78° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 76° in 2012.
Knierim’s center stands about 1,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Manson Group, Terrace Terrane (Megablock Zone); Manson Impact Structure (sedimentary-breccia, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sedimentary-breccia, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 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 Knierim reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Cedar Creek, Cedar Creek, the North Raccoon, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Knierim; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Knierim has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Knierim normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 72°, in 1964; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Rockwell City, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
