The Osceola 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
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 71° in 1990.
Osceola’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wild Mountain, about 1,090 ft, 12 miles north.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.3 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 Osceola reaches the Gulf of America by way of Osceola Creek, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,840 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 Osceola; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Osceola has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Osceola normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at St. Croix Falls, 7 miles north-northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
