The Kerkhoven 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−12° on Nov. 12, 1966, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is −8° in 1959.
Kerkhoven’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Tom, about 1,370 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Leucocratic-granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro, pyroxenite, diorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Kerkhoven reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mud Creek, the East Branch Chippewa, the Chippewa, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,170 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kerkhoven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kerkhoven has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Kerkhoven normally reaches 42° and falls to 22°. The record high is 69°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Benson, 15 miles west-southwest, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
