The Hilldale Colony 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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78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1880. Next is 74° in 1990.
Hilldale Colony’s center stands about 2,800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,700 ft to 2,940 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Signal Butte, about 3,030 ft, 10 miles north.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.4 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 Hilldale Colony reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,360 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 Hilldale Colony; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hilldale Colony has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Hilldale Colony normally reaches 42° and falls to 20°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1880 from the Havre Area threaded record (Havre Airport Asos, 18 miles south, 210 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
