The South Elgin 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, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1983. Next is 74° in 1999.
South Elgin’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Johnsons Mound, about 900 ft, 11 miles southwest.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. 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, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 4 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 South Elgin reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Fox River, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,500 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 South Elgin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Elgin 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 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 South Elgin normally reaches 48° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1983 at Elgin Water, 5 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
