The Humboldt 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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−30° on Nov. 15, 1911, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is −19° in 1986.
Humboldt’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 20 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Ordovician (limestone, dolostone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, gypsum, anhydrite. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 0.1 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 Humboldt reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Salt Coulee, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 810 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.
Often dry. About 100% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Humboldt; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Humboldt has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −5° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Humboldt normally reaches 34° and falls to 19°. The record high is 67°, in 1939; the record low −14°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Pembina, 8 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
