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.
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64° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 59° in 1990.
Alden’s center stands about 1,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,320 ft to 1,640 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Anorthositic intrusions and inclusions, undifferentiated (anorthosite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. 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: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Anorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbroic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 Alden reaches Lake Superior by way of Big Sucker Creek: about 18 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
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 warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 70 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Alden normally reaches 35° and falls to 19°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Brimson 2 S, 11 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
