The Esmond 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.
69° on Nov. 13, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 68° in 1979.
Esmond’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 1,650 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently 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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 24 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 Esmond reaches Hudson Bay by way of the North Fork Sheyenne, the Sheyenne, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,590 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
500 miles of the trip are on the Sheyenne.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Esmond; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Esmond has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. About 19 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Esmond normally reaches 36° and falls to 17°. The record high is 68°, in 2001; the record low −7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Harvey 4 NE, 16 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.