The Monona 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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71° on Nov. 17, 1941, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2012.
Monona’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maquoketa formation (shale, dolostone), from the Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 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 31×. 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, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.3 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 Monona reaches the Gulf of America by way of Silver Creek, Roberts Creek, the Turkey and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monona has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Monona normally reaches 45° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.17 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Postville, 9 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
