The Midway 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 73° in 2001.
Midway’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sioux Quartzite (quartzite, mudstone), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 11 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 Midway reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Watonwan, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,020 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Midway; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Midway has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Midway normally reaches 44° and falls to 26°. The record high is 68°, in 1953; the record low −13°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.53 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Windom, 13 miles southwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
