The Mount Sterling 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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75° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 70° in 1990.
Mount Sterling’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 460 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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. 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: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Mount Sterling reaches the Gulf of America by way of Copper Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,640 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Winneshiek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mount Sterling; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Sterling has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Mount Sterling normally reaches 46° and falls to 27°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Gays Mills, 4 miles east, 470 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
