The Good Thunder 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 75° in 2012.
Good Thunder’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 63×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 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 Good Thunder reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Maple, the Le Sueur, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,950 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Good Thunder; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Good Thunder has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Good Thunder normally reaches 43° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Winnebago, 17 miles south-southwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
