The Saddle Butte 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1880. Next is 74° in 1990.
Saddle Butte’s center stands about 2,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,480 ft to 3,010 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Number One Mountain, about 4,910 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic volcanic rock (mafic-volcanic), from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 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 15×. 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: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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. 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 Saddle Butte reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,340 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 Saddle Butte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saddle Butte has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Saddle Butte normally reaches 42° and falls to 20°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1880 from the Havre Area threaded record (Havre Airport Asos, 6 miles west-northwest, 130 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
