The Castle Rock 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
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Showers likely
72° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 72° in 2025.
Castle Rock’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Hill, about 1,180 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Ordovician (shale, limestone, sandstone), from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old.
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 60×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 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 Castle Rock reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Branch Vermillion, the Vermillion, Vermillion Slough and the Mississippi: about 1,810 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Castle Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Castle Rock has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Castle Rock normally reaches 42° and falls to 24°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.01 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Rosemount Research And Outreach Center, 9 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
