The Washington Lake 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 72° in 2012.
Washington Lake’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 56×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 Washington Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bevens Creek, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,890 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washington Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington Lake normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Jordan 1 SSW, 15 miles east, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
