The West Union 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
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Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 67° in 1999.
West Union’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
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 3 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. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, paragneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.6 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 West Union reaches the Gulf of America by way of Silver Creek, Ashley Creek, the Sauk and the Mississippi: about 2,020 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Zumwalles Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Union; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Union 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 West Union 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 northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
