The Mendota 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 71° in 1953.
Mendota’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Hill, about 1,180 ft, 13 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Ordovician (shale, limestone, sandstone), from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old.
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 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.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 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 Mendota reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mendota; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mendota has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Mendota normally reaches 43° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 2025; the record low 0°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Minneapolis-St Paul Area threaded record (Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, 3 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
