The Maquoketa 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
74° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 73° in 2022.
Maquoketa’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Goose Rock, about 930 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hopkinton, Blanding, Tete Des Morts, Mosalem formations (dolostone), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. 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. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 8 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 Maquoketa reaches the Gulf of America by way of Prairie Creek, the Maquoketa and the Mississippi: about 1,560 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Maquoketa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Maquoketa has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Maquoketa normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Bellevue L/D 12, 18 miles northeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
