The Carrington 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.
68° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1967. Next is 68° in 2025.
Carrington’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,550 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hawks Nest, about 2,110 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Carrington reaches the Gulf of America by way of Kelly Creek, the James, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,620 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Columbia Road Reservoir and Depuy Dam 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 Carrington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carrington has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Carrington normally reaches 38° and falls to 19°. The record high is 67°, in 2001; the record low −3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.19 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1967 at Carrington 4 N, 4 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.