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.
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Chance of showers
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Showers likely
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 64° in 1913.
May’s center stands about 1,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,230 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ghost Hill, about 1,600 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
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 55×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, paragneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 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 Mosquito Creek, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 1,990 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
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 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 May 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, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
