The Bloomington 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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77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 72° in 1964.
Bloomington’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 0.4 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 Bloomington reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rattlesnake Creek, the Grant and the Mississippi: about 1,610 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bloomington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bloomington has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Bloomington normally reaches 47° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1980.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Guttenberg L And D 10, 8 miles southwest, 410 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
