The Alpha 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.
Sunny
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Partly cloudy
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Showers likely
−9° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is −3° in 2019.
Alpha’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,310 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old.
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 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 11 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 Alpha reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Fork Des Moines, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,810 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Roberts Creek and Big Creek Pounding Area.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alpha; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alpha has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Alpha normally reaches 42° and falls to 23°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.44 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Lakefield 2 NE, 15 miles west-northwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
