The Underwood 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
70° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 65° in 2001.
Underwood’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,280 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite, granodiorite, and diorite (tonalite, granodiorite, diorite), 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 62×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.9 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.
Underwood straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the east 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 the Otter Tail, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,260 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay. One that lands on the east side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pomme de Terre, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,250 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Underwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Underwood has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Underwood normally reaches 37° and falls to 22°. The record high is 63°, in 1981; the record low 6°, in 1965. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Ottertail, 18 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
