The Musselshell 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.
Sunny
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Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
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Chance of showers
79° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 74° in 2016.
Musselshell’s center stands about 3,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,970 ft to 3,320 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chimney Butte, about 3,610 ft, 9 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt), 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 20×. 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: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 0.5 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 Musselshell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hawk Creek, the Musselshell, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,180 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 Musselshell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Musselshell has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Musselshell normally reaches 46° and falls to 25°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −15°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1989.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Melstone, 12 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
