The St. Paul 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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3.89 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.64 inches, fell in 1993.
St. Paul’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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 St. Paul reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, the Flatrock, the East Fork White, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,460 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of St. Paul; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
St. Paul has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 St. Paul normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 76°, in 1931; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.70 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Shelbyville Sewage Plant, 11 miles northwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
