The Nilwood 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. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 8° in 1986.
Nilwood’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shelburn-Patoka Formations undivided (shale, limestone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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 18 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 6 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 Nilwood reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shearles Branch, Macoupin Creek, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,300 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nilwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nilwood has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Nilwood normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.59 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Morrisonville, 19 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
