The North Prairie 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
2° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 4° in 2014.
North Prairie’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lapham Hill, about 1,250 ft, 6 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian, undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 57×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. 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 North Prairie reaches the Gulf of America by way of Jericho Creek, the Mukwonago, the Fox River, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Peoria Lake and Fox Lake.
1,190 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Prairie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Prairie has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 North Prairie normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Sullivan 3 SE - Wfo Mkx, 8 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
