The St. John 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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3.35 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1952. The next wettest, 2.16 inches, fell in 2003.
St. John’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Muscatatuck Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
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 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 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.
St. John straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northeast side runs to Lake Michigan; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Creek, the Kankakee, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,540 river miles. One that lands on the northeast side reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Portage-Burns Waterway: about 45 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
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 St. John; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
St. John has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 St. John normally reaches 49° and falls to 32°. The record high is 73°, in 1971; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Park Forest Water, 12 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
