The Steen 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
77° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1953.
Steen’s center stands about 1,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,400 ft to 1,510 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Mound, about 1,700 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated (conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million 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 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million 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.
A raindrop that lands in Steen reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rock River, the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,030 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Steen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Steen has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Steen normally reaches 45° and falls to 24°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −20°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Rock Rapids, 8 miles southeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
