Laurens, Iowa
8 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1984. It stands in Swan Lake Township. It lies in ZIP code area 50554. The Survey maps it on the Laurens quadrangle. 1,264 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,309 feet above sea level.
On record in Laurens
Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.
On the National Register 1 record
Laurens Carnegie Free Librarylisted 1974
Population over time
2 figuresLaurens grew from 1,258 to 1,264 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 1,258 | |
| 2020 | 1,264 | +6 (+0%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
5 surveys from 8 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1954 USGS Fort Dodge quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
- 1957 USGS Fort Dodge quadrangle1:250000
- 1958 USGS Fort Dodge quadrangle1:250000
- 1971 USGS Laurens quadrangle1:24000
- 1984 USGS Humboldt quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
Fires near this place
9 since 2006Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 9 fires within 5 miles of Laurens between 2006 and 2009, burning about 16 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 9 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 June 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 22 May 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 3.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 18 April 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 14 April 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 11 April 2009 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 11 April 2009 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 11 April 2009 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 1 April 2009 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Storms near this place
31 since 1994Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Laurens in 31 storm reports between 1994 and 2023: 13 hail, 10 thunderstorm wind, 2 flood, 2 heavy rain. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2008 | Flash Flood | Laurens | $150,000 | Extensive flooding stopping travel and water was backing up into basements. |
| April 2011 | Hail | Laurens | $75,000 | The public reported baseball size hail and some minor urban flooding. |
| June 2007 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $50,000 | no account filed |
| June 1998 | Flood | Laurens | $50,000 | no account filed |
| May 1994 | Hail | Laurens | $50,000 | no account filed |
| April 2013 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $40,000 | An athletic equipment shed and baseball field dugout at the Laurens-Marathon school was destroyed. At least four trees had multiple branches down. |
| May 2018 | Hail | Laurens | $15,000 | Public reported golf ball sized hail via social media. |
| May 2018 | Hail | Laurens | $15,000 | Public reported large hail up to ping pong ball sized covering the ground. |
| August 2010 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $15,000 | Three foot diameter trees and large limbs were blown down. |
| May 2006 | Lightning | Laurens | $15,000 | no account filed |
| August 1995 | Hail | Laurens | $15,000 | no account filed |
| August 1995 | Hail | Laurens | $15,000 | no account filed |
| April 2013 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $10,000 | A shed was blown over. |
| September 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $10,000 | no account filed |
| July 1997 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $10,000 | no account filed |
| May 2018 | Hail | Laurens | $5,000 | Public reported half dollar sized hail. The report was relayed via county Sheriff's Office. |
| March 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $5,000 | no account filed |
| August 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $5,000 | no account filed |
| May 2001 | Hail | Laurens | $5,000 | no account filed |
| May 2001 | Hail | Laurens | $3,000 | no account filed |
| June 2001 | Hail | Laurens | $3,000 | no account filed |
| August 2005 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | $2,000 | no account filed |
| June 2001 | Hail | Laurens | $1,000 | no account filed |
| May 2023 | Flash Flood | Laurens | - | Delayed report of extensive flooding in town. Water up against some homes and businesses in town. Time estimated. |
| May 2023 | Heavy Rain | Laurens | - | A 24 hour total of 6.90 inches of rain, with 3.5 inches of that occurring in the last one hour. |
| July 2018 | Thunderstorm Wind | Laurens | - | Several reports of 50 to 60 mph winds and tree damage, some of which came from the mPING application. Time estimated from radar. |
| September 2009 | Funnel Cloud | Laurens | - | Reported by the Iowa State Patrol. |
| June 2008 | Heavy Rain | Laurens | - | Rainfall of 1.5 to 2 inches. |
| March 2011 | Hail | Laurens | - | no account filed |
| June 2010 | Flood | Laurens | - | no account filed |
| April 2004 | Hail | Laurens | - | no account filed |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ware | 6.3 miles | 8 | |
| Havelock | 8.1 miles | 8 | |
| Ridotto | 9.4 miles | 8 | |
| Pocahontas | 12.4 miles | 8 | |
| Plover | 12.5 miles | 8 | |
| Varina | 13.2 miles | 8 | |
| Rusk | 13.8 miles | 8 | |
| Rubens Siding | 14.5 miles | 8 |
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Laurens | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q954646 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 458243. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.




