The Fayette 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−3° on Nov. 15, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is −1° in 2019.
Fayette’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. 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 24 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 Fayette reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yellowstone, the East Branch Pecatonica, the Pecatonica, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,750 river miles.
1,450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fayette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fayette has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Fayette normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 71°, in 1971; the record low 0°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Darlington Wwtp, 6 miles southwest, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
