The Prior 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 71° in 1953.
Prior Lake’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Hill, about 1,180 ft, 7 miles east.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. 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 22 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 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 Prior Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Credit, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,840 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Prior Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prior Lake has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Prior Lake normally reaches 43° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 2025; the record low 0°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Minneapolis-St Paul Area threaded record (Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, 15 miles northeast, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
