The Monson 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
68° on Nov. 13, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 67° in 1939.
Monson’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 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.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, mudstone, marlstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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 Monson reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Mustinka, the Bois de Sioux, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,250 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake Traverse 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 Monson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at White Rock Dam, 4 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
