The Fort Ripley 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 67° in 2025.
Fort Ripley’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,120 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Interlayered volcanic and sedimentary rocks (volcanic, sedimentary), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, paragneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.7 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 Fort Ripley reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Ripley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Ripley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Ripley normally reaches 39° and falls to 22°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Brainerd, 14 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
