The Bowman 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 71° in 1953.
Bowman’s center stands about 2,970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,900 ft to 3,130 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White Butte, about 3,480 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slope Formation (sandstone, siltstone, claystone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 41×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 6 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 Bowman reaches the Gulf of America by way of Spring Creek, the North Fork Grand, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,670 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 Bowman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bowman has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Bowman normally reaches 41° and falls to 19°. The record high is 71°, in 1953; the record low −16°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1915 at Bowman, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
