The Fleming 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.
68° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 68° in 1999.
Fleming’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mille Lacs and North Range Groups and equivalent sedimentary rocks (siltstone, graywacke, slate), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Fleming reaches the Gulf of America by way of Fleming Brook, the Rice and the Mississippi: about 2,060 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fleming; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fleming has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fleming normally reaches 38° and falls to 23°. The record high is 64°, in 2005; the record low −7°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Sandy Lake Dam Libby, 14 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.