The Bass Lake 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.
68° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 65° in 1917.
Bass Lake’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,140 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is County Hill, about 1,390 ft, 7 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 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 Bass Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bean Brook, the Namekagon, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bass Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bass Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bass Lake normally reaches 40° and falls to 24°. The record high is 62°, in 2025; the record low −6°, in 1943. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Hayward Area threaded record (Hayward Municipal Airport, 10 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.