The Bena 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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67° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 64° in 1913.
Bena’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,370 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Calc-alkalic volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks (alkalic-volcanic), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 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.
Alkalic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.9 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 Bena reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sixmile Brook, the Leech Lake and the Mississippi: about 2,210 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 Bena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bena has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 27 inches of water.
On November 14 Bena normally reaches 37° and falls to 22°. The record high is 62°, in 1939; the record low −5°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Leech Lake, 7 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
