The Winterset 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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80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2012.
Winterset’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kansas City Group (limestone, shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old.
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 49×. 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, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 0.9 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 Winterset reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cedar Creek, the North River, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,570 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Winterset; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Winterset has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Winterset normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Winterset 4 N, 5 miles north, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
