The Monticello 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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70° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 68° in 2025.
Monticello’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Liberty Pole Hill, about 1,110 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
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 51×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.8 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 Monticello reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Branch Little Sugar, the Little Sugar, the Sugar, the Pecatonica, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,670 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monticello; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monticello 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, 11 miles south-southwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
