The Nokay Lake 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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69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 68° in 1999.
Nokay Lake’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Warren Hill, about 1,470 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Interlayered volcanic and sedimentary rocks (volcanic, sedimentary), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary, hypabyssal. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Banded-iron-formation. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Nokay Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Nokasippi and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nokay Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nokay Lake 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 Nokay Lake 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, 7 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
