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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74° on Nov. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 72° in 1999.
Bismarck’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,030 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic orthogneiss and migmatite (orthogneiss, migmatite), from the Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion 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 Bismarck reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Branch Rush, the Rush, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 1,940 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
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 cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bismarck normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Gaylord, 11 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
