The Big Falls 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely
67° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 65° in 2001.
Big Falls’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,200 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Granite, tonalite, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 12 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 Big Falls reaches the Gulf of America by way of Stony Creek, the Thornapple, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,910 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Wissota and Holcombe Flowage.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Falls has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Big Falls normally reaches 40° and falls to 25°. The record high is 64°, in 1990; the record low −1°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.13 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Big Falls Hydro, 4 miles south, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
