The Montezuma 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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1° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 4° in 1959.
Montezuma’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 0.9 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 Montezuma reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,330 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Montezuma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Montezuma has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Montezuma normally reaches 53° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1931; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.72 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Rockville, 8 miles east-southeast, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
