The Ward 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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69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 67° in 1999.
Ward’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tower Hill, about 1,500 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Schist and tonalitic to granodioritic paragneiss (schist, paragneiss), 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.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Schist, paragneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dioritic, granodiorite. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.5 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 Ward reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Long Prairie, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ward; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ward has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Ward normally reaches 38° and falls to 21°. The record high is 68°, in 1953; the record low −5°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Long Prairie, 14 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
