The Moorhead 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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82° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 2012.
Moorhead’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,080 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Granger Hill, about 1,400 ft, 8 miles north.
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 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 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.
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 Moorhead reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Soldier, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,840 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 Moorhead; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moorhead has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Moorhead normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low −6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.17 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Logan 1 WNW, 19 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
