The North Utica 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.
1° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 4° in 2019.
North Utica’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ancell Group (sandstone, limestone, dolostone), from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 North Utica reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pecumsaugan Creek, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,420 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 North Utica; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Utica has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 North Utica normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1989; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.04 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Peru, 5 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.