The East Dubuque 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.
73° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 71° in 1953.
East Dubuque’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sherrill Mound, about 1,220 ft, 11 miles northwest.
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 32×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 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 East Dubuque reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,550 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of East Dubuque; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
East Dubuque has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 East Dubuque normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Dubuque L&D 11, 3 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.