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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−1° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 0° in 1986.
Waterloo’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Liberty Mound, about 1,060 ft, 15 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 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.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 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 Maunesha, the Crawfish, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,710 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Koshkonong.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Waterloo normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 70°, in 1971; the record low 5°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1897.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Lake Mills Wwtp, 5 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
