The Marcus 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
75° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1921. Next is 75° in 2001.
Marcus’s center stands about 1,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,370 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakata and Windrow Formations (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old.
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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 24 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 Marcus reaches the Gulf of America by way of Whisky Creek, the West Fork Little Sioux, the West Fork Ditch, the Monona Harrison Ditch, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,920 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 Marcus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marcus has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Marcus normally reaches 46° and falls to 25°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low −17°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.38 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1921 at Cherokee, 14 miles east-southeast, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
