The Shell 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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67° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1977. Next is 63° in 2016.
Shell Lake’s center stands about 1,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,510 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Toad Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 5 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Volcaniclastic rocks of felsic to intermediate composition (felsic-volcanic), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
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 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 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.
Shell Lake straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the southwest side runs to Hudson Bay; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shell Lake, the Shell, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,100 river miles. One that lands on the southwest side reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Toad, the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,330 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Shell Lake.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shell Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shell Lake has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1977 at Tamarac Wildlife Ref, 10 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
