The Surprise Creek Colony 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.
Mostly cloudy
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Showers likely; cooler
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−15° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is −9° in 1966.
Surprise Creek Colony’s center stands about 4,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,120 ft to 4,830 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gibson Peak, about 8,030 ft, 13 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Mississippian, 324 to 331 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Mississippian to Early Pennsylvanian, 315 to 331 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Early Cretaceous, 125 to 133 million 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. 6 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 Surprise Creek Colony reaches the Gulf of America by way of Surprise Creek, Arrow Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,240 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 Surprise Creek Colony; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Surprise Creek Colony has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Surprise Creek Colony normally reaches 46° and falls to 23°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −12°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Stanford, 6 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
