The Minerva 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
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Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Chance of showers
73° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 67° in 1934.
Minerva’s center stands about 1,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,480 ft to 1,650 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jack Pine Hill, about 1,990 ft, 10 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic intrusion, from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 24 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 Minerva reaches Hudson Bay by way of Hier Creek, the Wild Rice, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,200 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Minerva; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minerva has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Minerva normally reaches 35° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Itasca University Of Minn, 13 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
