The Crystal 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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−13° on Nov. 14, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1927. Next is −13° in 2005.
Crystal’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mowry-Skull Creek, Undivided (shale, sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Shale. 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 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 Crystal reaches Hudson Bay by way of Cart Creek, the North Branch Park, the Park, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 940 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 Crystal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crystal has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Crystal normally reaches 34° and falls to 18°. The record high is 70°, in 1939; the record low −13°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 2.03 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1927 at Cavalier 7 NW, 18 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
