The East Lynn 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.
2° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 3° in 2019.
East Lynn’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Borden Siltstone, from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 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 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.
Siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 10 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 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 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 East Lynn reaches the Gulf of America by way of Fountain Creek, Mud Creek, Sugar Creek, the Iroquois, the Kankakee, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,580 river miles.
Lake on the way: Peoria Lake.
1,190 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of East Lynn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
East Lynn 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 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 East Lynn normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 74°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Hoopeston, 6 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.