The Silver Creek 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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70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 68° in 1953.
Silver Creek’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 810 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gustafson Hill, about 1,380 ft, 6 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Felsic intrusive rocks, granophyre (felsic-hypabyssal), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 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 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gabbroic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mafic-hypabyssal, gabbro, monzodiorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 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 Silver Creek reaches Lake Superior by way of Skunk Creek and the Gooseberry: about 15 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Silver Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silver Creek has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Silver Creek normally reaches 41° and falls to 27°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Two Harbors, 7 miles south-southwest, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
