The North Branch 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−10° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is −5° in 2005.
North Branch’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 830 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wild Mountain, about 1,090 ft, 13 miles east.
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 6 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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 0.4 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 North Branch reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Branch Sunrise, the Sunrise, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,870 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 North Branch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Branch has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 North Branch normally reaches 41° and falls to 22°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −4°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1990 at Wild River State Park, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
