The Height of Land 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Chance of showers
67° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1977. Next is 63° in 2016.
Height of Land’s center stands about 1,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,440 ft to 1,590 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Toad Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 4 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granite to granodiorite (granite, granodiorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.7 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 Height of Land reaches Hudson Bay by way of Height of Land Lake, the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,350 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Otter Tail Lake, Big Pine Lake, Height of Land 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 Height of Land; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Height of Land has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1977 at Tamarac Wildlife Ref, 7 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
