The Orton 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
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 16, 1934, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 68° in 1953.
Orton’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion 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 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.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. 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 Orton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Swamp Creek, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,040 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orton has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Orton normally reaches 37° and falls to 20°. The record high is 64°, in 2025; the record low −12°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Park Rapids Municipal Airport, 18 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
