The Crystal Bay 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.
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−7° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is −4° in 1995.
Crystal Bay’s center stands about 1,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,770 ft to 2,020 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Tower Hill, about 2,100 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Anorthositic intrusions and inclusions, undifferentiated (anorthosite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Anorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mafic-hypabyssal, diorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro, troctolite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units 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.
Crystal Bay straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the north side runs to Hudson Bay; most of the rest goes to Lake Superior.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Superior by way of Hoist Creek, Moose Creek and the Manitou: about 25 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the north side reaches Hudson Bay by way of Scott Creek, the Dumbbell, the Island, the Isabella, the South Kawishiwi, the Bottle, the Loon, the Rainy, the Winnipeg and the Nelson: about 1,160 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Crystal Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crystal Bay has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 94 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Crystal Bay normally reaches 36° and falls to 22°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low 1°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Wolf Ridge Elc, 16 miles south, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
