The Hettinger 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
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
−22° on Nov. 14, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is −15° in 2022.
Hettinger’s center stands about 2,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,620 ft to 2,840 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wolf Butte, about 3,020 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.3 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 Hettinger reaches the Gulf of America by way of Flat Creek, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,590 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 Hettinger; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hettinger has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hettinger normally reaches 42° and falls to 18°. The record high is 71°, in 2025; the record low −22°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.03 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Hettinger Municipal Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
