The Fairmont 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 75° in 2001.
Fairmont’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million 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 Fairmont reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Creek, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,040 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairmont; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairmont 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 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Fairmont normally reaches 43° and falls to 23°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Swea City 5 N, 13 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
