The Duluth 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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68° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 67° in 1999.
Duluth’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Felsic intrusive rocks, granophyre (felsic-hypabyssal), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gabbroic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-hypabyssal, gabbro, monzodiorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.5 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 Duluth reaches Lake Superior by way of the Little Knife and the Knife: about 6 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Duluth; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Duluth has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 90 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Duluth normally reaches 38° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Duluth Area threaded record (Duluth International Airport, 17 miles west-southwest, 190 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
