The Gull 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.
Gull Lake’s center stands about 1,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is County Hill, about 1,390 ft, 12 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chengwatana Volcanic Group (basalt), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 47×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 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 Gull Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Spring Creek, 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 Gull Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gull 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 Gull 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, 15 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.