The Elmdale 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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Partly cloudy
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Showers likely
70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 68° in 1953.
Elmdale’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,220 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Eagle Mountain, about 1,490 ft, 9 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Little Falls Formation (schist, slate), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 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 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 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 Elmdale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elmdale Creek, the Little Two and the Mississippi: about 1,940 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elmdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elmdale has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 57 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Elmdale normally reaches 40° and falls to 25°. The record high is 67°, in 1990; the record low −4°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Collegeville St. John'S, 18 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
