The St. Lawrence 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
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−17° on Nov. 14, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is −15° in 1959.
St. Lawrence’s center stands about 1,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,470 ft to 1,630 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ree Hills, about 2,140 ft, 13 miles west.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. 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.
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 St. Lawrence reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turtle Creek, the James, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,340 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 St. Lawrence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
St. Lawrence has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 St. Lawrence normally reaches 44° and falls to 23°. The record high is 73°, in 1990; the record low −17°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Miller, 2 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
