The Bottineau 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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66° on Nov. 13, 1981, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 65° in 2001.
Bottineau’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,550 ft to 1,860 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Boundary Butte, about 2,540 ft, 12 miles north.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.6 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 Bottineau reaches Hudson Bay by way of Oak Creek, Willow Creek, the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,080 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 Bottineau; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bottineau has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 50 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Bottineau normally reaches 35° and falls to 16°. The record high is 61°, in 1981; the record low −21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Bottineau, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
