The Knife River 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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70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 68° in 1953.
Knife River’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moose Mountain, about 1,140 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Basalt and basaltic andesite (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion 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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mafic-hypabyssal, gabbro, monzodiorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gabbroic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Knife River reaches Lake Superior by way of the Knife: about 1 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Knife River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Knife River has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Knife River normally reaches 41° and falls to 27°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Two Harbors, 8 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
