The Monticello 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 76° in 1985.
Monticello’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 1,530 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Koger Mountain, about 1,810 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis Limestones, undivided, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 22×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 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 Monticello reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elk Spring Creek, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake, Lake Cumberland and Cordell Hull Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monticello; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monticello has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 5 inches of snow.
On November 14 Monticello normally reaches 57° and falls to 33°. The record high is 76°, in 1993; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Jamestown Wwtp, 17 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
