The Williams 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.
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−8° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is −7° in 2005.
Williams’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 120 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 3 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 15 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 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 Williams reaches Hudson Bay by way of Williams Creek, Bostick Creek, the Winnipeg and the Nelson: about 850 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake of the Woods and 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 Williams; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Williams has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. About 23 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Williams normally reaches 35° and falls to 20°. The record high is 60°, in 2023; the record low −2°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Baudette International Airport, 16 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
