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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
73° on Nov. 11, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 71° in 1999.
Ripley’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Ordovician (limestone, dolostone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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.
A raindrop that lands in Ripley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dodge Center Creek, the South Branch Middle Fork Zumbro, the Middle Fork Zumbro, the Zumbro and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Ripley normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1973.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Owatonna, 15 miles northwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
