The Bellechester 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
73° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 72° in 2012.
Bellechester’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 0.7 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 Bellechester reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cold Creek, the Zumbro and the Mississippi: about 1,790 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bellechester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bellechester has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Bellechester normally reaches 43° and falls to 24°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Zumbrota, 9 miles west-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
