The Naplate 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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78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 77° in 1911.
Naplate’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Platteville Group (dolostone, limestone), from the Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old.
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 51×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 0.3 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 Naplate reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,430 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 Naplate; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Naplate has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Naplate normally reaches 49° and falls to 32°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.69 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Ottawa 4 SW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
