The Shafer 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 71° in 1990.
Shafer’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion 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 Shafer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lawrence Creek, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,850 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shafer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shafer has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Shafer normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at St. Croix Falls, 5 miles east-northeast, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
