The Elkton 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1953.
Elkton’s center stands about 1,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,690 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sioux Quartzite, from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 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 43×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mudstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Chert, shale, chalk. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.4 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 Elkton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Spring Creek, the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,150 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 Elkton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elkton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Elkton normally reaches 42° and falls to 22°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −18°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Flandreau, 14 miles south-southwest, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
