The Lake Shore 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.
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 64° in 1913.
Lake Shore’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ghost Hill, about 1,600 ft, 8 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. 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 3 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 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 Shore reaches the Gulf of America by way of Gull Lake, the Gull, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Gull Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Shore; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Shore has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. About 27 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Shore normally reaches 38° and falls to 23°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low −5°, in 1911. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Gull Lake Dam, 5 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.