The Wahkon 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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72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 70° in 1953.
Wahkon’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gray granodiorite to granite intrusions (granodiorite, granite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion 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.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, marble, mica-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Wahkon reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mille Lacs Lake, the Rum and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Mille Lacs Lake and Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wahkon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wahkon has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Wahkon normally reaches 40° and falls to 23°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 1.02 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Mora, 19 miles south-southeast, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
