The Alden 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
−2° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is −2° in 2019.
Alden’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle Devonian (dolostone, limestone, shale), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 0.8 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 Alden reaches the Gulf of America by way of Foster Creek, the East Branch Blue Earth, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,090 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alden has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Alden normally reaches 44° and falls to 25°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Wells, 11 miles northwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
