The Grey Eagle 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.
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 66° in 2025.
Grey Eagle’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tower Hill, about 1,500 ft, 15 miles north.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion 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.
A raindrop that lands in Grey Eagle reaches the Gulf of America by way of Adley Creek, the Sauk and the Mississippi: about 1,990 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Zumwalles Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grey Eagle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grey Eagle has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Grey Eagle normally reaches 39° and falls to 22°. The record high is 64°, in 2016; the record low −5°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Melrose, 10 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.