The Girard 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
70° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 65° in 2001.
Girard’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,320 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Inspiration Peak, about 1,720 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granite to granodiorite (granite, granodiorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.8 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.
Girard straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the south side runs to Hudson Bay; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Leaf, the Redeye, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,060 river miles. One that lands on the south side reaches Hudson Bay by way of West Battle Lake, Otter Tail Lake, the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,300 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Girard; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Girard has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Girard normally reaches 37° and falls to 22°. The record high is 63°, in 1981; the record low 6°, in 1965. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Ottertail, 6 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
