The Nashwauk 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.
−13° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is −12° in 1986.
Nashwauk’s center stands about 1,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 1,630 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maple Hill, about 1,650 ft, 10 miles east.
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 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Banded-iron-formation, sedimentary-breccia. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, lignite, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 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 Nashwauk reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Prairie and the Mississippi: about 2,190 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nashwauk; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nashwauk has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Nashwauk normally reaches 35° and falls to 18°. The record high is 62°, in 1953; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 from the Hibbing Area threaded record (Hibbing Chisholm Hibbing Airport, 16 miles east, 130 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.