The Rice 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
73° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 67° in 1934.
Rice’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,500 ft to 1,780 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jack Pine Hill, about 1,990 ft, 7 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic intrusion, from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 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.
Rice straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the southeast side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Hudson Bay.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Hudson Bay by way of Hier Creek, the Wild Rice, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,210 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay. One that lands on the southeast side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 2,320 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rice; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rice 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 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Rice normally reaches 35° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Itasca University Of Minn, 9 miles east-southeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
