The Plevna 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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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers; cooler
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77° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 72° in 1953.
Plevna’s center stands about 2,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,690 ft to 3,010 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Antelope Butte, about 3,160 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ludlow Member of Fort Union Formation (shale, siltstone, bentonite), from the Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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, siltstone, bentonite. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, black-shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 0.3 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 Plevna reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sandstone Creek, O'Fallon Creek, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,960 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 Plevna; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plevna has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Plevna normally reaches 44° and falls to 19°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −24°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Plevna, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
