The Ripley 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
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 67° in 2025.
Ripley’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,140 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Little Falls Formation (schist, slate), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 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 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.7 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 Ripley reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ripley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ripley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Ripley normally reaches 39° and falls to 22°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Brainerd, 16 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
