The Alexandria 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 1953.
Alexandria’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Formation (chalk, marlstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 7 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 Alexandria reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pierre Creek, the James, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,080 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alexandria; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alexandria has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Alexandria normally reaches 44° and falls to 22°. The record high is 73°, in 1953; the record low −21°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Alexandria, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
