The University Heights 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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2° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 6° in 2014.
University Heights’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedar Valley Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 374 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian, 374 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Dolostone, mudstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 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 University Heights reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,480 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of University Heights; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
University Heights has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 University Heights normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Iowa City Municipal Airport, here, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
