The Little Browning 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
−30° on Nov. 13, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is −30° in 1959.
Little Browning’s center stands about 3,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,540 ft to 3,900 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Headlight Butte, about 4,180 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Two Medicine Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 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 24×. 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, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 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 Little Browning reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cut Bank Creek, the Marias, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,390 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 Little Browning; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Little Browning has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Little Browning normally reaches 41° and falls to 21°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low −14°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Cut Bank Airport, here, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
