The Hazel 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−11° on Nov. 14, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −10° in 1959.
Hazel’s center stands about 1,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,710 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
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, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 24 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 Hazel reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Marsh, Dolph Creek, the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,250 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Poinsett, Lake Albert and Lake Marsh.
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 Hazel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hazel has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Hazel normally reaches 40° and falls to 22°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low −11°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Watertown Regional Airport, 15 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
