The Kiester 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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−2° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is −2° in 2019.
Kiester’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Ordovician (limestone, dolostone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 10 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 Kiester reaches the Gulf of America by way of Brush Creek, the East Branch Blue Earth, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,070 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 Kiester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kiester has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Kiester normally reaches 44° and falls to 25°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Wells, 15 miles north, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
