The Slater 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
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
67° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 64° in 1913.
Slater’s center stands about 1,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,310 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Thunder Peak, about 1,820 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 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 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, lignite, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 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 Slater reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Swift, the Boy, the Leech Lake and the Mississippi: about 2,250 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Leech Lake, Lake Pepin and Boy 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 Slater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Slater 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 27 inches of water.
On November 14 Slater normally reaches 37° and falls to 22°. The record high is 62°, in 1939; the record low −5°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Leech Lake, 15 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
