The Mediapolis 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.
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Partly cloudy; warmer
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0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 4° in 1940.
Mediapolis’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Augusta Group (dolostone, limestone), from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 0.4 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 Mediapolis reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hawkeye Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,410 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mediapolis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mediapolis has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mediapolis normally reaches 50° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1964; the record low 6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 from the Burlington Area threaded record (Burlington Municipal Airport, 16 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
