The Fortier 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 76° in 2001.
Fortier’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,410 ft to 1,700 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated (conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 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 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 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 Fortier reaches the Gulf of America by way of Canby Creek, Lazarus Creek, the Lac qui Parle, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,200 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fortier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fortier has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Fortier normally reaches 43° and falls to 24°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Canby, 7 miles east-northeast, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
