The Prairie Lake 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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−9° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is −7° in 1986.
Prairie Lake’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugarloaf, about 1,490 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion 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.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion 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.
Prairie Lake straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the south side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Superior.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Superior by way of the East Savanna and the Saint Louis: about 70 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the south side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Prairie and the Mississippi: about 2,120 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Saint Louis.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Prairie Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prairie Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Prairie Lake normally reaches 37° and falls to 20°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Floodwood 2 E, 10 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
