The Nichols 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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77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 76° in 1989.
Nichols’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedar Valley Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 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 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 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 Nichols reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hockeys Slough, Wapsinonoc Creek, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,460 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nichols; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nichols has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Nichols normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1990; the record low 5°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Muscatine, 13 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
