The Kasson 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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70° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 67° in 1971.
Kasson’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Warner Hill, about 1,160 ft, 5 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antrim Shale (black-shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 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 Kasson reaches Lake Michigan by way of Glen Lake and the Crystal: about 9 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Glen Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kasson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kasson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 143 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Kasson normally reaches 45° and falls to 31°. The record high is 62°, in 2009; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1969.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Maple City 1 E, 3 miles northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
