The Wolf 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.
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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
69° on Nov. 16, 1934, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 68° in 1953.
Wolf Lake’s center stands about 1,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 1,710 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Toad Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (metabasalt, greenstone), 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 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Archean. About 0.3 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 Wolf Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Redeye, the Crow Wing and the Mississippi: about 2,070 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 Wolf Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wolf Lake has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wolf Lake normally reaches 37° and falls to 20°. The record high is 64°, in 2025; the record low −12°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Park Rapids Municipal Airport, 15 miles east-northeast, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
