The Bancroft 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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−7° on Nov. 11, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is −6° in 1959.
Bancroft’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 110 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, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million 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 Bancroft reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bancroft Creek, the Shell Rock, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,740 river miles.
Lake on the way: Albert Lea Lake.
1,410 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bancroft; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bancroft has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Bancroft normally reaches 43° and falls to 26°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Albert Lea 3 SE, 7 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
