The Hecla 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−12° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is −10° in 1955.
Hecla’s center stands about 1,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,280 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 20 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cannon Hill, about 1,460 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.9 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 Hecla reaches the Gulf of America by way of the James, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,390 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 Hecla; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hecla has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Hecla normally reaches 41° and falls to 20°. The record high is 70°, in 2016; the record low −12°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.33 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Columbia 8 N, 13 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
