The Lyons 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−9° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is −7° in 1916.
Lyons’s center stands about 1,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 55×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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 Lyons reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Logan Creek Dredge, the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lyons; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lyons has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Lyons normally reaches 48° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.36 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at West Point, 14 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
