The Northrop 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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80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 75° in 2012.
Northrop’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 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 Northrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elm Creek, the Blue Earth, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,030 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northrop; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Northrop has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Northrop normally reaches 43° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Winnebago, 14 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
