The Belfield 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 76° in 2025.
Belfield’s center stands about 2,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,540 ft to 2,710 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Windy Butte, about 2,960 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sentinel Butte Formation (siltstone, claystone, sandstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 24 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 Belfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Heart, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case and Lewis and Clark Lake.
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 Belfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belfield has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Belfield normally reaches 43° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −16°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Medora, 16 miles west, 310 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
