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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4° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 4° in 2019.
Bismarck’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 7 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 Bismarck reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Vermilion, the Vermilion, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,390 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bismarck normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 75°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Danville, 9 miles south-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
