The Monroe 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.
70° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 68° in 2025.
Monroe’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 55×. 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.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 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 Monroe reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bushnell Creek, Skinner Creek, the Pecatonica, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,730 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 Monroe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monroe has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Monroe Wwtp, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.