The Heron 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−9° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is −3° in 2019.
Heron Lake’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,390 ft to 1,530 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated (conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 5 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 Heron Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Heron Lake, Division Creek, the Heron Lake Outlet, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Roberts Creek, Big Creek Pounding Area and South Heron Lake.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Heron Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Heron Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Heron Lake normally reaches 42° and falls to 23°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.44 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Lakefield 2 NE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
