The Prairie Elk Colony 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
−13° on Nov. 12, 2022, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is −12° in 1995.
Prairie Elk Colony’s center stands about 2,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,980 ft to 2,310 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maxwell Hill, about 2,420 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bearpaw Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 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 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.
Sandstone, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 5 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, siltstone, black-shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 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 Prairie Elk Colony reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,880 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 Prairie Elk Colony; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prairie Elk Colony has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Prairie Elk Colony normally reaches 43° and falls to 22°. The record high is 65°, in 2016; the record low −4°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.32 in, fell in 1996.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Wolf Point, 9 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
