The Valier 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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74° on Nov. 14, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 74° in 1999.
Valier’s center stands about 3,820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,710 ft to 3,880 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Buttes, about 4,180 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Two Medicine Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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.
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 Valier reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bullhead Creek, the Marias, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,390 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 Valier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valier has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Valier normally reaches 44° and falls to 21°. The record high is 74°, in 1990; the record low −16°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Conrad, 17 miles east-southeast, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
