The Solon Mills 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
78° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 74° in 2020.
Solon Mills’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gander Mountain, about 960 ft, 6 miles 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 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, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone. 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 Solon Mills reaches the Gulf of America by way of Nippersink Creek, the Fox River, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,550 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Peoria Lake and Fox 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 Solon Mills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Solon Mills has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Solon Mills normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Mchenry Stratton Lock/Dam, 9 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
