The Sheldon 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
75° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 73° in 2001.
Sheldon’s center stands about 1,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fort Benton Group (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 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 Sheldon reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Little Floyd, the Floyd, 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 Sheldon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sheldon has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Sheldon normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low −16°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Sanborn, 10 miles east, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
