The Whiteside 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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4° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 6° in 1986.
Whiteside’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buffalo Knob, about 1,030 ft, 7 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Decorah Group, Plattin Group (limestone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Whiteside reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Sandy Creek, Sulphur Creek, the North Fork Cuivre, the Cuivre and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Whiteside; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Whiteside has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Whiteside normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 79°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.06 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 at Bowling Green 1 E, 14 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
