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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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−3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1929. Next is −3° in 1986.
Aurora’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,140 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gneiss, migmatite, and amphibolite, from the Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 Aurora reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elder Creek, the Yellow, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wissota.
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 warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Aurora normally reaches 40° and falls to 24°. The record high is 65°, in 1990; the record low 3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1929 at Holcombe, 13 miles west-northwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
