The Whitetail 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
−25° on Nov. 11, 2022, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1987. Next is −23° in 2014.
Whitetail’s center stands about 2,510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,390 ft to 2,760 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Long Butte, about 2,890 ft, 5 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lebo Member of Fort Union Formation (shale, sandstone, bentonite), from the Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old.
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 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone, bentonite. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 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.
Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 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 Whitetail reaches the Gulf of America by way of Whitetail Creek, Big Muddy Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,980 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 Whitetail; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Whitetail has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Whitetail normally reaches 39° and falls to 15°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low −23°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1996.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1987 at Scobey 4 NW, 15 miles west-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
