The Columbia Heights 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 68° in 2001.
Columbia Heights’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 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 Columbia Heights reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,840 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Columbia Heights; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Columbia Heights has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Columbia Heights normally reaches 40° and falls to 28°. The record high is 62°, in 2011; the record low 8°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Lower St. Anthony Falls, 4 miles south, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
