page_title: Fargo, North Dakota
section_title: Climate
hierarchical_section_title: Fargo, North Dakota / Geography / Climate
caption_attribution_description: Thunder Bay at lower center on the north side of Lake Superior. Taken at 1:58 AM Central.
context_page_description: Fargo is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, North Dakota, United States. The most populous city in the state, it accounts for nearly 17% of the state population. According to the 2019 United States Census estimates, its population was 124,662, making it the 223rd-most populous city in the United States. Fargo, along with its twin city of Moorhead, Minnesota, as well as the adjacent cities of West Fargo, North Dakota and Dilworth, Minnesota, form the core of the Fargo-Moorhead, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in 2019 contained a population of 246,145.
  Founded in 1871 on the Red River of the North floodplain, Fargo is a cultural, retail, health care, educational, and industrial center for eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. The city is also home to North Dakota State University.
context_section_description: Because of its location in the Great Plains and its distance from both mountains and oceans, Fargo has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa/Dfb), featuring long, exceedingly cold winters and warm to hot, humid summers. It lies in USDA Plant hardiness zone 4a. The city features winters among the coldest in the contiguous United States; the coldest month of January has a normal mean temperature of 9.3 °F (−12.6 °C). There is an annual average of 43 days with a minimum of 0 °F (−18 °C) or lower. Snowfall averages 50.1 inches (127 cm) per season. Spring and autumn are short and highly variable seasons. Summers have frequent thunderstorms, and the warmest month, July, has a normal mean temperature of 71.0 °F (21.7 °C); highs reach 90 °F (32 °C) on an average of 12.7 days each year. Annual precipitation of 22.6 inches (574 mm) is concentrated in the warmer months. Record temperatures have ranged from −48 °F (−44 °C) on January 8, 1887 to 114 °F (46 °C) on July 6, 1936; the record coldest daily maximum is −29 °F (−34 °C) on January 22, 1936, while, conversely, the record warmest daily minimum was 82 °F (28 °C), set four days after the all-time record high. On average, the first and last dates to see a minimum at or below the freezing mark are September 30 and May 8, respectively, allowing a growing season of 144 days.
  In 2011, Fargo won The Weather Channel's "America's Toughest Weather City" poll. Almost 850,000 votes, blizzards, cold, and floods secured the title for the city.
caption: Fargo is the city at the far left under the solar panel, lower down than Winnipeg and Grand Forks. Taken at 1:58 AM Central on November 10th, 2017 during ISS Expedition 53.
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