The Minot 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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72° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 69° in 1953.
Minot’s center stands about 1,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,550 ft to 1,780 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Buttes, about 2,150 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cannonball Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. 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: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 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 Minot reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,200 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 Minot; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minot has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Minot normally reaches 40° and falls to 21°. The record high is 67°, in 2025; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Minot International Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
