The May 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
74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is 70° in 1990.
May’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Mound, about 1,130 ft, 12 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million 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 46×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million 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 May reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,820 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 May; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
May has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 May normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 at Forest Lake 5 NE, 12 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
