The Dunnell 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
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Showers likely
78° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2001.
Dunnell’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 4 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 Dunnell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,790 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Roberts Creek and Big Creek Pounding Area.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dunnell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dunnell has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dunnell normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low −6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Estherville 4 E, 11 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
