The Marion 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
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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
−3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −1° in 1986.
Marion’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ancell Group (sandstone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million 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 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.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 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 Marion reaches the Gulf of America by way of Crooked Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,640 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Marion; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marion has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Marion normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Lancaster 4 WSW, 17 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
