The Medora 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.
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78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 76° in 2025.
Medora’s center stands about 2,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,250 ft to 2,670 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sentinel Butte, about 3,420 ft, 15 miles west.
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 19×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 1 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 Medora reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Little Missouri, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,780 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 Medora; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Medora has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Medora normally reaches 43° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −16°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Medora, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
