The Fort Peck 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 68° in 2016.
Fort Peck’s center stands about 2,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,030 ft to 2,350 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coal Hill, about 2,740 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bearpaw Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, black-shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 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.
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 Fort Peck reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,930 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sharpe and Lake Francis Case.
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 Fort Peck; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Peck has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fort Peck normally reaches 45° and falls to 24°. The record high is 68°, in 2016; the record low −8°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Fort Peck Power Plant, 2 miles east, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
