The Aurora 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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72° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2022.
Aurora’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Morris, about 1,180 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, mixed-clastic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 Aurora reaches Lake Michigan by way of Willow Creek, the Wolf River and the Fox River: about 100 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Winneconne and Lake Butte des Morts.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Aurora; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Aurora has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Aurora normally reaches 45° and falls to 30°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Oshkosh, 20 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
