The Towner 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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83° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 2005.
Towner’s center stands about 3,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,870 ft to 3,980 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Fm (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 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.
Towner has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Towner normally reaches 55° and falls to 26°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Tribune 1 W, 17 miles east, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
