The Oronoco 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
73° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 72° in 2012.
Oronoco’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 200 ft: 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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 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 Oronoco reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork Zumbro, the Zumbro and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oronoco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oronoco has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Oronoco normally reaches 43° and falls to 24°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Zumbrota, 11 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
