The Pelican 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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68° on Nov. 17, 1913, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 68° in 1953.
Pelican’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,200 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maple Hill, about 1,590 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (metabasalt, greenstone), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Pelican reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pelican Lake, Pelican Brook, the Pine River and the Mississippi: about 2,020 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Pelican Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pelican; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pelican has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Pelican normally reaches 39° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 2016; the record low −4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Pine River Dam, 7 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
