The Wolf Creek 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.
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77° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 70° in 1907.
Wolf Creek’s center stands about 3,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,470 ft to 5,020 ft, a difference of 1,550 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Willow Mountain, about 7,170 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Two Medicine and Virgelle Formations (volcanic), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 172 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 347 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 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. 7 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 Wolf Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Prickly Pear Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,370 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 Wolf Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wolf Creek has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Wolf Creek normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Holter Dam, 3 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
