The Iowa 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
11.00 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1895. The next wettest, 6.77 inches, fell in 1918.
Iowa’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 50 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie Terraces (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Iowa reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Fork English Bayou, English Bayou and the Calcasieu: about 55 river miles.
Lake on the way: Mud Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Iowa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Iowa has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 43° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Iowa normally reaches 72° and falls to 51°. The record high is 87°, in 1917; the record low 29°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 5.40 in, fell in 1918.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Lake Charles Area threaded record (Lake Charles Regional Airport, 15 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
