The Milton 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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6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 15° in 2005.
Milton’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Meppen Limestone, Fern Glen Formation, and Burlington-Keokuk Limestone, from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 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 Milton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Blue Creek, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,250 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Milton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Milton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Pittsfield No 2, 9 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
