The New Lenox 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.
74° on Nov. 14, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 74° in 2020.
New Lenox’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian System undivided (dolostone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 24 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 New Lenox reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hickory Creek, the Des Plaines, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,490 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 New Lenox; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
New Lenox has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 New Lenox normally reaches 49° and falls to 33°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Joliet Brandon Road Lock/Dam, 7 miles west, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.