The Ashley 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
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Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 66° in 2025.
Ashley’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite and granodiorite (orthogneiss), from the Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old.
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. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 24 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 Ashley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ashley Creek, the Sauk and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Zumwalles Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Ashley normally reaches 39° and falls to 22°. The record high is 64°, in 2016; the record low −5°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Melrose, 14 miles east-southeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
