The Laurel 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
80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 1941.
Laurel’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 930 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 110 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 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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 347 million years old. About 0.7 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 Laurel reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Timber Creek, Timber Creek, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,620 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Laurel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laurel has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Laurel normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.36 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Marshalltown, 12 miles north, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
