The Little Sioux 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
−5° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is −4° in 2014.
Little Sioux’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Cherokee Group and Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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 45×. 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, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 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 Little Sioux reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Little Sioux; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Little Sioux has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Little Sioux normally reaches 50° and falls to 27°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.11 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Tekamah Municipal Airport, 8 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
