The Argenta 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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−31° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is −30° in 1959.
Argenta’s center stands about 6,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,800 ft to 7,090 ft, a difference of 1,290 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Torrey Mountain, about 11,080 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sediment or sedimentary rock, from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sedimentary. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Early Pennsylvanian, 315 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Middle Eocene, 41 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Argenta reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rattlesnake Creek, the Beaverhead, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,620 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Fort Peck and Lake Sharpe.
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 Argenta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Argenta has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in December. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Argenta normally reaches 42° and falls to 22°. The record high is 66°, in 1906; the record low −10°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1911.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Dillon U Of Montana Western, 12 miles east-southeast, 990 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
