The Goodland 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.
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−13° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is −12° in 1986.
Goodland’s center stands about 1,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,310 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, lignite, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old. About 2 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.
Goodland straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northwest side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Superior.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Superior by way of the West Branch Floodwood, the Floodwood and the Saint Louis: about 90 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the northwest side reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bruce Creek, the Swan River and the Mississippi: about 2,140 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Saint Louis.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Goodland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goodland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Goodland normally reaches 35° and falls to 18°. The record high is 62°, in 1953; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 from the Hibbing Area threaded record (Hibbing Chisholm Hibbing Airport, 21 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
