The Fordyce 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1932. Next is 77° in 2021.
Fordyce’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,550 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Formation (limestone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.9 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 Fordyce reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Bow Creek, Bow Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fordyce; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fordyce has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1932 at Yankton Municipal Airport, 15 miles north, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
