The Morris 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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3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 4° in 1933.
Morris’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 560 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 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, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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 Morris reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Fork Nettle Creek, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,460 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 Morris; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morris has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Morris normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Morris 1 NW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
