The Bowbells 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
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Chance of showers; cooler
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71° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1932. Next is 69° in 1961.
Bowbells’s center stands about 1,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,930 ft to 1,970 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Butte, about 2,460 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bullion Creek Formation (claystone, siltstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 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 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 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 Bowbells reaches Hudson Bay by way of Stony Creek, the Des Lacs, the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,310 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Upper Des Lacs Lake 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 Bowbells; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bowbells has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bowbells normally reaches 36° and falls to 17°. The record high is 68°, in 1939; the record low −17°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2013.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1932 at Kenmare 1 WSW, 11 miles southeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
