The Big Lake 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
67° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 66° in 1953.
Big Lake’s center stands about 1,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,280 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugarloaf, about 1,490 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 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 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.4 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.
Big Lake straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the east side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Superior.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Superior by way of the Saint Louis: about 40 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the east side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Moose Horn, the Kettle, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 71 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Lake normally reaches 36° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Cloquet, 5 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
