The Artichoke 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 69° in 1953.
Artichoke’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,070 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic intrusion, from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 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 Artichoke reaches the Gulf of America by way of Artichoke Creek, Dry Wood Creek, the Pomme de Terre, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,170 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 Artichoke; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Artichoke has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Artichoke normally reaches 42° and falls to 24°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low −9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.27 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Artichoke Lake 1 E, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
