The West Glendive 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 sunny
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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 70° in 1989.
West Glendive’s center stands about 2,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,040 ft to 2,430 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mountain, about 2,940 ft, 13 miles southeast.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. 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, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, bentonite. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 0.5 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 West Glendive reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,840 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 West Glendive; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Glendive has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 West Glendive normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 67°, in 2016; the record low −13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Glendive, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
