The Harris 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 72° in 2001.
Harris’s center stands about 1,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,490 ft to 1,570 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakata and Windrow Formations (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million 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 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 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 Harris reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Run, the Ocheyedan, the Little Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,050 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Harris; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Harris has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Harris normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Lake Park 3 SSE, 7 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
