The Rader Creek 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.
Partly cloudy
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Showers likely; cooler
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70° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 66° in 1894.
Rader Creek’s center stands about 5,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,730 ft to 6,470 ft, a difference of 1,740 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Table Mountain, about 10,210 ft, 10 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic rock, from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 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.
Granitic. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, latite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sedimentary-breccia, conglomerate. Age: Early Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 56 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.8 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 Rader Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rader Creek, Little Pipestone Creek, Big Pipestone Creek, Jefferson Slough, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,540 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 Rader Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rader Creek has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rader Creek normally reaches 41° and falls to 16°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −25°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Butte Bert Mooney Airport, 12 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
