The Deerfield 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
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Partly cloudy
Showers likely
73° on Nov. 11, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 71° in 1999.
Deerfield’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,070 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 90 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 13 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 8 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 Deerfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Crane Creek, the Straight, the Cannon and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Deerfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Deerfield has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Deerfield normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1973.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Owatonna, 8 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
