The Rock Rapids 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
77° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1953.
Rock Rapids’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,320 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakata and Windrow Formations (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 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 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 2 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 Rock Rapids reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rock River, the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,020 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rock Rapids; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rock Rapids has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Rock Rapids normally reaches 45° and falls to 24°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −20°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Rock Rapids, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
