The Silver Gate 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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Chance of showers; cooler
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−35° on Nov. 13, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1881. Next is −28° in 1955.
Silver Gate’s center stands about 7,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,310 ft to 10,280 ft, a difference of 2,970 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Granite Peak, about 12,670 ft, 14 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Early Mississippian, 347 to 468 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Early Eocene, 48 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, boulders. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 8 smaller units 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 Silver Gate reaches the Gulf of America by way of Soda Butte Creek, the Lamar, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,350 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 Silver Gate; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silver Gate has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Silver Gate normally reaches 38° and falls to 14°. The record high is 60°, in 1953; the record low −19°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.70 in, fell in 1930.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1881 at Lamar Ranger Station, 14 miles west-southwest, 820 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
