The Minonk 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
77° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 76° in 1911.
Minonk’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mattoon Formation (shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 4 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 Minonk reaches the Gulf of America by way of Long Point Creek, the Vermilion, 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 Minonk; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minonk has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Minonk normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.17 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Minonk, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
