The Dell 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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69° on Nov. 12, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 67° in 1999.
Dell’s center stands about 6,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,910 ft to 6,440 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Garfield Mountain, about 10,920 ft, 15 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 15 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sedimentary-breccia, conglomerate. Age: Early Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, limestone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Paleocene, 62 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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. 9 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 Dell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Red Rock, the Beaverhead, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,650 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 Dell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dell has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 53 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Dell normally reaches 42° and falls to 20°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −11°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.18 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Lima, 8 miles southeast, 280 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
