The Scales Mound 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
0° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 2° in 1986.
Scales Mound’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White Hill, about 1,270 ft, 5 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maquoketa Formation or Group (shale, limestone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 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 34×. 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. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 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 Scales Mound reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, the Apple and the Mississippi: about 1,560 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Scales Mound; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Scales Mound has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Scales Mound normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Elizabeth, 11 miles south, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
