The Waukegan 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
72° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 71° in 1971.
Waukegan’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian System undivided (dolostone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 13 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.
Waukegan straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the west side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Michigan.
Rain that falls on Waukegan runs straight into Lake Michigan. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the west side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Des Plaines, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,560 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waukegan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waukegan has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Waukegan normally reaches 48° and falls to 33°. The record high is 71°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.09 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Kenosha Wwtp, 14 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
