The Arthur 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
Chance of showers
66° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 66° in 2025.
Arthur’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Belle Fourche-Skull Creek, Undivided (shale, sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million 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 Arthur reaches Hudson Bay by way of the South Branch Elm, the Elm, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,070 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 Arthur; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Arthur has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Arthur normally reaches 38° and falls to 20°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Casselton Agronomy Farm, 16 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
