The Preston 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
74° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 73° in 2022.
Preston’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lost Mound, about 840 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. 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. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 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 Preston reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Copper Creek, Copper Creek, the Maquoketa and the Mississippi: about 1,540 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Preston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Preston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Preston normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Bellevue L/D 12, 15 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
