The Marvin 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
70° on Nov. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 67° in 1999.
Marvin’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,310 ft to 1,940 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Punished Womans Mound, about 2,060 ft, 13 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile 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 21×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. 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 Marvin reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Whetstone, the Whetstone, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,200 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Big Stone Lake and 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 Marvin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marvin has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Marvin normally reaches 40° and falls to 21°. The record high is 66°, in 1990; the record low −15°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.38 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Summit 1 W, 8 miles west-northwest, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
