The North Fork 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 66° in 2025.
North Fork’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite and granodiorite (orthogneiss), from the Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 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 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.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gabbro, pyroxenite, diorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Leucocratic-granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.1 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 North Fork reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Crow, the Crow and the Mississippi: about 2,040 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Koronis.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Fork; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Fork has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 North Fork normally reaches 39° and falls to 22°. The record high is 64°, in 2016; the record low −5°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Melrose, 16 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
