The Minot 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.
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74° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 68° in 1939.
Minot AFB’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,590 ft to 1,690 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
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 63×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 7 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 AFB reaches Hudson Bay by way of Egg Creek, Cut Bank Creek, the Deep River, the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,090 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 AFB; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minot AFB has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Minot AFB normally reaches 39° and falls to 20°. The record high is 68°, in 1939; the record low −19°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Foxholm 7 N, 11 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
