The Wise River 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.
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
−20° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is −12° in 2000.
Wise River’s center stands about 5,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,560 ft to 7,470 ft, a difference of 1,910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Lion Mountain, about 10,370 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, shale. Age: Early Triassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Wise River reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Big Hole, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,620 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Fort Peck and Lake Sharpe.
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 Wise River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wise River has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Wise River 3 WNW, 2 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
