The Walden 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 71° in 1954.
Walden’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,070 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mounds, about 1,340 ft, 9 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite and granodiorite (orthogneiss), from the Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 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.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 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 Walden reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Chippewa, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,170 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 Walden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Walden has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 27 inches of water.
On November 14 Walden normally reaches 40° and falls to 22°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1932. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Morris West Central Research And Outreach Center, 10 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
