The West Havre 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.
78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1880. Next is 74° in 1990.
West Havre’s center stands about 2,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,480 ft to 2,740 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Number One Mountain, about 4,910 ft, 15 miles south.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.6 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 Havre reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Creek, the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,360 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 Havre; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Havre has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 West Havre normally reaches 42° and falls to 20°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1880 from the Havre Area threaded record (Havre Airport Asos, here). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.