The Quincy 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. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 69° in 1941.
Quincy’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Friendship Mound, about 1,300 ft, 8 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
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.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 24 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 Quincy reaches the Gulf of America by way of Duck Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Quincy; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Quincy has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Quincy normally reaches 44° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 1944; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Friendship, 7 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.