The Orange 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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−8° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is −5° in 1940.
Orange’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 80 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 2 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 17 mi of the line.
Schist, paragneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 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 Orange reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Osakis, the Sauk and the Mississippi: about 2,040 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin, Lake Osakis and Zumwalles Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orange; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orange has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Orange normally reaches 38° and falls to 24°. The record high is 69°, in 1953; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Alexandria Chandler Field, 11 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
