The Ideal 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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68° on Nov. 17, 1913, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 68° in 1953.
Ideal’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,200 ft to 1,340 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maple Hill, about 1,590 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (metabasalt, greenstone), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Ideal reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pine River Reservoir, the Pine River and the Mississippi: about 2,030 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Pine River Reservoir and Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ideal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ideal has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° 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 Ideal normally reaches 39° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 2016; the record low −4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Pine River Dam, 4 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
