The Phelps 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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63° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 63° in 2023.
Phelps’s center stands about 1,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,670 ft to 1,910 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Military Hill, about 1,890 ft, 0 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Baraga Group; Michigamme Formation, undivided (metagraywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Banded-iron-formation. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. 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.
A raindrop that lands in Phelps reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Deerskin, the Eagle, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 2,020 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake, Lake Wisconsin, Lake Du Bay and Rainbow Flowage.
1,610 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Phelps; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Phelps has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 76 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Phelps normally reaches 39° and falls to 22°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Eagle River, 13 miles southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
