The Lake Elmo 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 71° in 1999.
Lake Elmo’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Mound, about 1,130 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
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 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 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 Lake Elmo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Valley Branch and the Mississippi: about 1,810 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Elmo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Elmo has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. About 29 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Elmo normally reaches 43° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 2025; the record low 1°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 at St. Paul Downtown Airport, 10 miles west-southwest, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
