The Gorman 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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69° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 68° in 2001.
Gorman’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,440 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Toad Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Volcanogenic graywacke and mudstone (graywacke, mudstone), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 58×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Graywacke, mudstone. 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 Gorman reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,310 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Otter Tail Lake, Big Pine Lake and Lake Winnipeg.
550 miles of the trip are on the Red River of the North.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gorman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gorman has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Gorman normally reaches 38° and falls to 20°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −11°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Detroit Lakes 1 NNE, 16 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
