The Champaign 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
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0° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 3° in 1959.
Champaign’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 710 ft to 790 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 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. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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.
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 Champaign reaches the Gulf of America by way of Copper Slough, the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi: about 1,380 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Carlyle Reservoir and Lake Shelbyville.
1,090 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Champaign; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Champaign has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Champaign normally reaches 51° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 at Champaign 3 S, 2 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
