The Hughes 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.
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69° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 67° in 1931.
Hughes’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Oronto Group; Freda Sandstone (arkose, siltstone), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Hughes reaches Lake Superior by way of Dahl Creek, Muskeg Creek and the Iron: about 20 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hughes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hughes has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hughes normally reaches 38° and falls to 24°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1943. The most rain on this date, 1.49 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 at Brule Ranger Station, 5 miles west-northwest, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
