The Four Bears Village 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
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
76° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 70° in 1981.
Four Bears Village’s center stands about 1,910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,820 ft to 2,100 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Butte, about 2,700 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bullion Creek Formation (claystone, siltstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 7 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 Four Bears Village reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Sakakawea, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,640 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sharpe and Lake Francis Case.
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 Four Bears Village; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Four Bears Village has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Four Bears Village normally reaches 39° and falls to 20°. The record high is 67°, in 2025; the record low −11°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Keene 3 S, 17 miles west-southwest, 560 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
