The Nessel 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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3.76 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 1.80 inches, fell in 1971.
Nessel’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 0.5 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 Nessel reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rush Creek, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,880 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nessel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nessel has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Nessel normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Cambridge, 12 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
