The Knight 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely
3.26 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1987. The next wettest, 1.62 inches, fell in 2005.
Knight’s center stands about 1,760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Puritan Quartz Monzonite (granodiorite, granite), from the Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.6 to 2.9 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.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic, schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.6 to 2.9 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. 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. 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.
Knight straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the south side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Superior.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Superior by way of LeClair Creek, Shine Creek, the Tyler Forks and the Bad River: about 80 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the south side reaches the Gulf of America by way of Augustine Creek, the East Fork Chippewa, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Knight; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Knight has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 155 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Knight normally reaches 38° and falls to 24°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1987 at Hurley, 15 miles north-northeast, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
