The Frankford 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 10° in 1986.
Frankford’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pickerton Hill, about 840 ft, 7 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Leemon Formation, Maquoketa Group, Cape Limestone, Kimmswick Limestone, Noix-Cyrene Limestone, Maquoketa Shale, from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. 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: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 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 Frankford reaches the Gulf of America by way of Peno Creek, the Salt River and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Frankford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Frankford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Frankford normally reaches 55° and falls to 36°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Saverton Lock And Dam 22, 11 miles north-northeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
