The Grand Forks AFB 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
65° on Nov. 13, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 65° in 2025.
Grand Forks AFB’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
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 61×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 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 Grand Forks AFB reaches Hudson Bay by way of Kelly Slough, the Turtle, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 950 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 Grand Forks AFB; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grand Forks AFB has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Grand Forks AFB normally reaches 36° and falls to 18°. The record high is 65°, in 2025; the record low −3°, in 2002. The most rain on this date, 0.26 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Grand Forks International Airport, 10 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
