The Rockdale 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 72° in 1971.
Rockdale’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Liberty Mound, about 1,060 ft, 7 miles west-northwest.
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 64×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 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 Rockdale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Koshkonong Creek, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Koshkonong.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockdale 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 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Rockdale normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 72°, in 1971; the record low 2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 1980.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Fort Atkinson Wwtp, 10 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
