The Crystal 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 68° in 1999.
Crystal’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,080 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 Crystal reaches the Gulf of America by way of Potato Creek, the Namekagon, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,970 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 Crystal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crystal has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Crystal normally reaches 40° and falls to 24°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Spooner Ag Research Station, 7 miles west-southwest, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
