The Fairmont 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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7° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1992. Next is 11° in 2014.
Fairmont’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 540 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian System undivided (dolostone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 3 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 Fairmont reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Des Plaines, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,480 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 Fairmont; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairmont has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 33 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Fairmont normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 67°, in 2025; the record low 16°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2002.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1992 at Romeoville Wfo, 3 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
