The West Des Moines 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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81° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1878. Next is 76° in 2001.
West Des Moines’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Cherokee Group and Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 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 West Des Moines reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Raccoon, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,540 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Des Moines; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Des Moines has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° 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 West Des Moines normally reaches 49° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1878 from the Des Moines Area threaded record (Des Moines International Airport, 4 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
