The Excel 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
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Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Chance of showers
63° on Nov. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 62° in 2025.
Excel’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granodiorite to hornblende diorite, locally magmatically foliated (granodiorite, diorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 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 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.
Granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Archean. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.2 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 Excel reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Thief, the Red Lake, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,080 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Excel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Excel has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Excel normally reaches 36° and falls to 20°. The record high is 62°, in 2025; the record low −4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Agassiz Refuge, 10 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
