The Ida 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 cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1985. Next is 75° in 2022.
Ida’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sylvania Sandstone, from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Evaporite, shale, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 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 Ida reaches Lake Erie by way of the Summerfield and Ida Drain and North Branch Otter Creek: about 12 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Often dry. About 60% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ida; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ida has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1985 at Tecumseh, 20 miles west-northwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
