The Butte 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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70° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 66° in 1894.
Butte’s center stands about 5,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,310 ft to 6,380 ft, a difference of 1,070 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Haystack Mountain, about 8,780 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic rock, from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.9 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.
Butte straddles the Continental Divide. Rain on the south side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to the Pacific Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Sand Creek, Silver Bow Creek, the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,230 river miles. One that lands on the south side reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Fork Divide Creek, Divide Creek, the Big Hole, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,620 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Umatilla and Noxon Rapids Reservoir.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Butte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Butte has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Butte normally reaches 41° and falls to 16°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −25°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Butte Bert Mooney Airport, 3 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
