The Whitlash 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
Mostly sunny
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Chance of showers; cooler
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72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 70° in 1934.
Whitlash’s center stands about 3,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,670 ft to 4,820 ft, a difference of 1,150 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is West Butte, about 6,980 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eagle Formation (sandstone, sandstone-mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
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 2 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Whitlash reaches the Gulf of America by way of Keller Creek, Breed Creek, the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,440 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 Whitlash; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Whitlash has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Whitlash normally reaches 42° and falls to 19°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −21°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.21 in, fell in 1986.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Goldbutte 7 N, 8 miles northwest, 430 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
