The Silver Star 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.
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
72° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 69° in 2025.
Silver Star’s center stands about 4,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,480 ft to 6,260 ft, a difference of 1,780 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hollowtop Mountain, about 10,590 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Tertiary sediment or sedimentary rock (conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 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 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, conglomerate. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 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. 7 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 Star reaches the Gulf of America by way of 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 Silver Star; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silver Star has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Silver Star normally reaches 45° and falls to 20°. The record high is 68°, in 2021; the record low −25°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.17 in, fell in 1965.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Twin Bridges, 10 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
