The Alton 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 74° in 2012.
Alton’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 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 Alton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Le Sueur, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Alton normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Waseca Southern Research And Outreach Center, 9 miles east, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
