The Monticello 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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0° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 3° in 1959.
Monticello’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
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, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 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 Monticello reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Sangamon, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,440 river miles.
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 Monticello; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monticello 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 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Monticello normally reaches 51° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 at Champaign 3 S, 18 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
