The Fairbanks 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
70° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 69° in 1953.
Fairbanks’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wolf River batholith; Wolf River Granite, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 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 Fairbanks reaches Lake Michigan by way of the South Branch Pigeon, the Pigeon, the Embarrass, the Wolf River and the Fox River: about 180 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Winneconne and Lake Butte des Morts.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairbanks; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairbanks has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fairbanks normally reaches 43° and falls to 27°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Rosholt, 14 miles west-southwest, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
