The Waterloo 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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−3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −1° in 1986.
Waterloo’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sherrill Mound, about 1,220 ft, 9 miles south.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 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 Waterloo reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Grant and the Mississippi: about 1,580 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waterloo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waterloo has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Waterloo normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Lancaster 4 WSW, 7 miles north-northeast, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
