The Laurel 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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77° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 71° in 1990.
Laurel’s center stands about 3,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,250 ft to 3,750 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stratford Hill, about 4,970 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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, 94 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 87 to 90 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 87 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. 4 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 Laurel reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,120 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 Laurel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laurel has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 57 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Laurel normally reaches 46° and falls to 27°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 from the Billings Area threaded record (Billings International Airport, 14 miles northeast, 270 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
