The Long Lake 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
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.
Long Lake’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 5 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 Long Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Long Lake Creek, Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,850 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lower Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Long Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Long Lake 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 Long Lake 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, 9 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
