The Quincy 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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7° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 8° in 1940.
Quincy’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Harrison Hill, about 750 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Meppen Limestone, Fern Glen Formation, and Burlington-Keokuk Limestone, from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Quincy reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cedar Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,300 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Quincy; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Quincy has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Quincy normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 78°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Quincy Dam 21, 2 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
