The Fern 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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73° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 67° in 1934.
Fern’s center stands about 1,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,380 ft to 1,540 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Anchor Hill, about 1,910 ft, 15 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic intrusion, from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 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 Fern reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 2,290 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Sugar Lake, Buck Lake, Lake Pepin and Lake Bemidji.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fern; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fern has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Fern normally reaches 35° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Itasca University Of Minn, 10 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
