The North Star 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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68° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 67° in 1999.
North Star’s center stands about 1,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Troctolite, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Anorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Mafic-hypabyssal, gabbro, monzodiorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 Star reaches Lake Superior by way of the Cloquet and the Saint Louis: about 80 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Island Lake Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Star; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Star has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 90 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 North Star normally reaches 38° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Duluth Area threaded record (Duluth International Airport, 17 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
