The Nisswa 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 68° in 1999.
Nisswa’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ghost Hill, about 1,600 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic intrusion, from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion 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 Nisswa reaches the Gulf of America by way of Gull Lake, the Gull, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Gull Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nisswa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nisswa has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Nisswa normally reaches 40° and falls to 22°. The record high is 67°, in 1953; the record low −5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 from the Brainerd Area threaded record (Brainerd Crow Wing County Airport, 11 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
