The Rockwell 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 1941.
Rockwell’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lime Creek Formation (shale, limestone, dolostone), from the Late Devonian, 374 to 384 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.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 0.6 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 Rockwell reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Branch Beaverdam Creek, the West Fork Cedar, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,690 river miles.
1,410 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockwell has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rockwell normally reaches 44° and falls to 26°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Mason City, 13 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
