The Milford 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.
Milford’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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.
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 Milford reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sugar Creek, the Iroquois, the Kankakee, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,560 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 Milford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Milford 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 Milford 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, 11 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.