The Fort Ransom 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 70° in 1953.
Fort Ransom’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Standing Rock Hill, about 1,480 ft, 7 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Formation (shale), 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 51×. 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. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 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.
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 Fort Ransom reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Sheyenne, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,260 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
430 miles of the trip are on the Red River of the North.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Ransom; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Ransom has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Ransom normally reaches 39° and falls to 20°. The record high is 66°, in 2016; the record low −10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Lisbon, 13 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
