The Dunn Center 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
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
75° on Nov. 11, 1961, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is 73° in 2016.
Dunn Center’s center stands about 2,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,140 ft to 2,330 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Horse Nose Butte, about 2,440 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sentinel Butte Formation (siltstone, claystone, sandstone), 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 29×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 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.
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 Dunn Center reaches the Gulf of America by way of Spring Creek, the Knife, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,660 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 Dunn Center; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dunn Center has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in August; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dunn Center normally reaches 41° and falls to 16°. The record high is 67°, in 2025; the record low −21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Dunn Center 1 E, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
