The Whitewater 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
−21° on Nov. 11, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1976. Next is −20° in 2014.
Whitewater’s center stands about 2,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,290 ft to 2,600 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thoeny Hills, about 3,120 ft, 15 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Claggett Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 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 30×. 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. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, 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 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 Whitewater reaches the Gulf of America by way of Whitewater Creek, the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,120 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 Whitewater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Whitewater has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Whitewater normally reaches 39° and falls to 19°. The record high is 67°, in 2025; the record low −20°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.31 in, fell in 1999.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1976 at Port Of Morgan, 19 miles north-northwest, 470 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
