The Mendota 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
1° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 3° in 1986.
Mendota’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 170 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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Mendota reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Little Vermilion, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,450 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 Mendota; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mendota has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Mendota normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 73°, in 1989; the record low 3°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.42 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Paw Paw 2 S, 11 miles northeast, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
