The Fargo 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
87° on Nov. 12, 1998, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1982. Next is 86° in 2002.
Fargo’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 160 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleistocene-Pliocene sands and gravels (sand, gravel), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, sand, gravel. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 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 Fargo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Suwannoochee Creek and the Suwannee: about 220 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fargo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fargo has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fargo normally reaches 73° and falls to 50°. The record high is 84°, in 1993; the record low 28°, in 1991. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1982 at Fargo 17 NE, 16 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
