The Turner 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.
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−21° on Nov. 11, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1985. Next is −18° in 2014.
Turner Colony’s center stands about 3,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,010 ft to 3,140 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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 Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 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.
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 Turner Colony reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cottonwood Creek, the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,190 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 Turner Colony; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Turner Colony has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in August; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Turner Colony normally reaches 41° and falls to 19°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low −18°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.15 in, fell in 1986.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1985 at Turner 11 N, 16 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
