The Fertile 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 66° in 1923.
Fertile’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite, granodiorite, and diorite (tonalite, granodiorite, diorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 Fertile reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Sand Hill, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,020 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fertile; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fertile has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fertile normally reaches 37° and falls to 19°. The record high is 67°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1971.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Ada, 19 miles southwest, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
