The Bismarck 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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17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1986. Next is 21° in 1986.
Bismarck’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is West Mountain, about 1,410 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Stanley Shale (black-shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Novaculite. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Marlstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Bismarck reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Hill Creek, the Caddo, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 590 river miles.
Lake on the way: De Gray Lake.
360 miles of the trip are on the Ouachita.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bismarck; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bismarck has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bismarck normally reaches 64° and falls to 42°. The record high is 86°, in 1999; the record low 25°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1986 at Hot Springs Asos, 12 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
