The Courtland 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
76° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 2012.
Courtland’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fort Hill, about 1,090 ft, 15 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 2 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 Courtland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Swan Lake, the Swan Lake Outlet, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Swan Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Courtland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Courtland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Courtland normally reaches 43° and falls to 23°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at St. Peter, 19 miles east-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
