The Detroit Lakes 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
Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 68° in 2001.
Detroit Lakes’s center stands about 1,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Detroit Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 3 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Volcaniclastic rocks of felsic to intermediate composition (felsic-volcanic), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 Detroit Lakes reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Pelican, the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,300 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake Lizzie, Fish Lake and Lake Winnipeg.
550 miles of the trip are on the Red River of the North.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Detroit Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Detroit Lakes has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Detroit Lakes normally reaches 38° and falls to 20°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −11°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Detroit Lakes 1 NNE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
