The Hinsdale 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
−11° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is −10° in 1986.
Hinsdale’s center stands about 2,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,120 ft to 2,750 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Landre Hills, about 2,600 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Claggett 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 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 0.7 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 Hinsdale reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,050 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 Hinsdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hinsdale has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hinsdale normally reaches 40° and falls to 20°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.38 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Hinsdale 4 SW, 4 miles southwest, 620 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
