The Miles City 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 72° in 1953.
Miles City’s center stands about 2,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,330 ft to 2,620 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Knob, about 3,200 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. 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. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, bentonite. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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 Miles City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Tongue River, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,920 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 Miles City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Miles City has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Miles City normally reaches 45° and falls to 22°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −17°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Miles City Airport, 3 miles northwest, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
