The Steamboat Rock 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2012.
Steamboat Rock’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Dolostone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Steamboat Rock reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elk Creek, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Steamboat Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Steamboat Rock has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Steamboat Rock normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Iowa Falls, 12 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
