The Christiania 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 73° in 2001.
Christiania’s center stands about 1,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,460 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated (conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 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 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 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.
A raindrop that lands in Christiania reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,780 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Roberts Creek and Big Creek Pounding Area.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Christiania; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Christiania has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Christiania normally reaches 44° and falls to 26°. The record high is 68°, in 1953; the record low −13°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.53 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Windom, 6 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
