The Kathryn 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
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
68° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 67° in 1953.
Kathryn’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,440 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Standing Rock Hill, about 1,480 ft, 5 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.8 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 Kathryn reaches Hudson Bay by way of Spring Creek, the Sheyenne, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,290 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 Kathryn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kathryn has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Kathryn normally reaches 43° and falls to 24°. The record high is 66°, in 2025; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.16 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Enderlin 2 W, 16 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
