The Crystal 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
72° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1967. Next is 71° in 2025.
Crystal’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently 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 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.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 4 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 Crystal reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shingle Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,850 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Crystal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crystal has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Crystal normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 71°, in 2025; the record low 5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.19 in, fell in 2022.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1967 at New Hope, 2 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
