The Ham Lake 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−7° on Nov. 11, 1995, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1981. Next is 3° in 1996.
Ham Lake’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 60 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 24 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 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 Ham Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Coon Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ham Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ham Lake has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ham Lake normally reaches 43° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low 4°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.13 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1981 at Vadnais Lake, 16 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
