The Merrill 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.
Mostly sunny
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Partly cloudy
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Showers likely
76° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 74° in 1953.
Merrill’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 230 ft: 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.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 63×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 7 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 Merrill reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Floyd, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,910 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Merrill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Merrill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Merrill normally reaches 46° and falls to 24°. The record high is 72°, in 2001; the record low −24°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Le Mars, 7 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
