The Frontenac 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
5° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 5° in 2019.
Frontenac’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Farm Hill, about 1,180 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million 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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million 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 Frontenac reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wells Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,760 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Frontenac; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Frontenac has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Frontenac normally reaches 43° and falls to 27°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Red Wing Dam 3, 14 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
