The Postville 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
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Showers likely
71° on Nov. 17, 1941, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2012.
Postville’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 140 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. 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 10 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 Postville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Williams Creek, the Yellow and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Postville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Postville 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 Postville 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
