The Grand Marais 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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3.87 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1897. The next wettest, 2.44 inches, fell in 2015.
Grand Marais’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,580 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Eagle Mountain, about 2,300 ft, 15 miles northwest.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 3 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.
Rain that falls on Grand Marais runs straight into Lake Superior. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grand Marais; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grand Marais has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 69° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Grand Marais normally reaches 37° and falls to 25°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1971.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Grand Marais, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
