The Sheffield 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 75° in 2022.
Sheffield’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carbondale Formation (shale, sandstone, coal), from the Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 10 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.
Shale, 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 Sheffield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Coal Creek, Mud Creek, the Green River, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,510 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sheffield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sheffield 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 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Sheffield normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Kewanee 1 E, 12 miles southwest, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
