The Waterville 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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74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 71° in 1941.
Waterville’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mondell Hill, about 1,150 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie Du Chien Group and St. Peter Sandstone (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. 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, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Waterville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Paint Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,630 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waterville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waterville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Waterville normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1964; the record low 6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Lynxville Dam 9, 10 miles east, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
