The Jackson 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
1° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 2° in 2019.
Jackson’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Hill, about 1,180 ft, 12 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 0.6 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 Jackson reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,850 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Jackson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jackson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Jackson normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 71°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Chanhassen Wsfo, 7 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
