The Wild 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
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Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 66° in 1923.
Wild Rice’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Frenchmans Bluff, about 1,350 ft, 7 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Calc-alkalic volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks (alkalic-volcanic), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Alkalic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 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 Wild Rice reaches Hudson Bay by way of Mashaug Creek, the Wild Rice, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,090 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
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 Wild Rice; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wild Rice has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wild Rice normally reaches 37° and falls to 19°. The record high is 67°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1971.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Ada, 13 miles west, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
