The Churchill 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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74° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 70° in 1990.
Churchill’s center stands about 4,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,350 ft to 4,790 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ruby Mountain, about 6,220 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Tertiary sediment or sedimentary rock (conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sedimentary-breccia, conglomerate. Age: Early Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Churchill reaches the Gulf of America by way of Camp Creek, the Gallatin, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,500 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 Churchill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Churchill has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Churchill normally reaches 42° and falls to 19°. The record high is 66°, in 1963; the record low −15°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Bozeman Gallatin Field Airport, 8 miles east-northeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
