The Rock Elm 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is 69° in 1953.
Rock Elm’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie du Chien Group (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 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 Rock Elm reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rock Elm Creek, Plum Creek, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rock Elm; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rock Elm has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rock Elm normally reaches 41° and falls to 22°. The record high is 72°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Ellsworth 1 E, 12 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
