The Waconia 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
1° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 2° in 2019.
Waconia’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 2 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 Waconia reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Waconia, Carver Creek, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,880 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Waconia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waconia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waconia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Waconia normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 71°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Chanhassen Wsfo, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
