The Shell 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 68° in 1999.
Shell Lake’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. 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 24 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 Shell Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sawyer Creek, the Yellow, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin, Lake Mallalieu 175 and Yellow Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shell Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shell Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Shell Lake normally reaches 40° and falls to 24°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Spooner Ag Research Station, 6 miles north-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
