The Pray 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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−11° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is −9° in 1986.
Pray’s center stands about 5,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,820 ft to 5,820 ft, a difference of 1,000 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Cowen, about 11,040 ft, 10 miles east.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Early Eocene, 48 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Archean. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Pray reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,260 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 Pray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pray has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 63 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Pray normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1996.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Livingston 12 S, 10 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
