The Alberta 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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71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1953.
Alberta’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitoid intrusions, variably magnetic (granitic), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion 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 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.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Tonalite, diorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 2 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 Alberta reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Elk River and the Mississippi: about 1,930 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alberta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alberta has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Alberta normally reaches 40° and falls to 23°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low −8°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Saint Cloud Area threaded record (St. Cloud Regional Airport, 17 miles south-southwest, 220 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
