The Parnell 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
75° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 72° in 1939.
Parnell’s center stands about 1,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,080 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated (conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old.
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.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 24 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.
Parnell straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the south side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Hudson Bay.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Hudson Bay by way of Lake Traverse, the Bois de Sioux, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,250 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay. One that lands on the south side reaches the Gulf of America by way of Fish Creek, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,180 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Traverse and Lake Winnipeg.
550 miles of the trip are on the Red River of the North.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Parnell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Parnell has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Parnell normally reaches 41° and falls to 24°. The record high is 68°, in 2016; the record low −8°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Wheaton, 13 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
