The Dakota 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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72° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 71° in 1989.
Dakota’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Galena Group (Trenton Limestone) (dolostone, limestone), from the Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old.
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 60×. 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, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 0.7 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 Dakota reaches the Gulf of America by way of Winneshiek Creek, the Pecatonica, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,670 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dakota; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dakota has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Dakota normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 2.50 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Freeport Wastewater Plant, 7 miles south-southwest, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
