The Trade 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is 66° in 1990.
Trade Lake’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chengwatana Volcanic Group (basalt), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 0.6 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 Trade Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Trade, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,880 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 Trade Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Trade Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Trade Lake normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Luck, 9 miles south-southeast, 270 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
