The Adams 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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3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 5° in 2019.
Adams’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. 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, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 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. 3 smaller units 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 Adams reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tournear Creek, Burton Creek, Mill Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Adams; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Adams has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Adams normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low 9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 from the Quincy Area threaded record (Quincy Regional Airport, 5 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
