The Tower 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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65° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 63° in 2010.
Tower’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 1,570 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jasper Peak, about 1,680 ft, 3 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Volcaniclastic rocks of felsic to intermediate composition (felsic-volcanic), 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 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.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Alkalic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Monzonite, quartz-monzonite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Banded-iron-formation. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.8 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 Tower reaches Hudson Bay by way of Vermilion Lake, the Vermilion, the Rainy, the Winnipeg and the Nelson: about 1,060 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, Vermilion Lake and Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tower; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tower has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −7° in January. A normal year brings about 69 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Tower normally reaches 36° and falls to 19°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low −13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.53 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Tower 2 S, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
