The Somerset 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 71° in 1999.
Somerset’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
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 Somerset reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Straight, the Cannon and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Somerset; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Somerset 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 Somerset 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, 8 miles north, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
