The Belcourt 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
−20° on Nov. 11, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is −18° in 1959.
Belcourt’s center stands about 1,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,830 ft to 2,100 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fox Hills Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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 37×. 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: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Belcourt reaches Hudson Bay by way of Ox Creek, Willow Creek, the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,140 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 Belcourt; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belcourt has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −5° in January. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Belcourt normally reaches 36° and falls to 16°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −18°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 1960.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Belcourt Keya Radio, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
