The Milton 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
68° on Nov. 14, 1939, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 64° in 1953.
Milton’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,470 ft to 1,600 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Milton reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Middle Branch Park, the Park, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 950 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Milton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Milton has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −5° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Milton normally reaches 33° and falls to 16°. The record high is 68°, in 1939; the record low −20°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Langdon Experiment Farm, 17 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
