The Sugar Bush 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.
67° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1977. Next is 63° in 2016.
Sugar Bush’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,450 ft to 1,630 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Toad Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 12 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite, lamprophyre, and metamorphic equivalents, 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 54×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 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 Sugar Bush reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,360 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 Sugar Bush; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sugar Bush 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, 3 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.