The Chokio 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 69° in 1953.
Chokio’s center stands about 1,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic orthogneiss and migmatite (orthogneiss, migmatite), from the Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, paragneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Chokio reaches the Gulf of America by way of Muddy Creek, the Pomme de Terre, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,190 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 Chokio; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chokio has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Chokio normally reaches 42° and falls to 24°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low −9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.27 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Artichoke Lake 1 E, 13 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
