The Emmetsburg 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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77° on Nov. 17, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2012.
Emmetsburg’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakata and Windrow Formations (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 24 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 Emmetsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cylinder Creek, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,710 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Roberts Creek and Big Creek Pounding Area.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Emmetsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Emmetsburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Emmetsburg normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Emmetsburg, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
