The Two Inlets 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.
73° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 67° in 1934.
Two Inlets’s center stands about 1,510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,450 ft to 1,600 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Anchor Hill, about 1,910 ft, 11 miles north-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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 Two Inlets reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hay Creek, the Potato, the Fishhook, the Shell, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,090 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 Two Inlets; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Two Inlets has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Two Inlets normally reaches 35° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Itasca University Of Minn, 12 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.