The Spruce Grove 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 16, 1934, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 68° in 1953.
Spruce Grove’s center stands about 1,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,480 ft to 1,600 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Toad Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (metabasalt, greenstone), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. 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, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Archean. About 0.3 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.
A raindrop that lands in Spruce Grove reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kettle, the Blueberry, the Shell, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,100 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
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 Spruce Grove; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spruce Grove has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Spruce Grove normally reaches 37° and falls to 20°. The record high is 64°, in 2025; the record low −12°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Park Rapids Municipal Airport, 16 miles northeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
