The Steele 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−17° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is −17° in 1959.
Steele’s center stands about 1,860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,750 ft to 1,870 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hell Creek Formation (sandstone, siltstone, claystone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.1 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 Steele reaches the Gulf of America by way of Long Lake, Long Lake Creek, Random Creek, Apple Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,560 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 Steele; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Steele has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Steele normally reaches 41° and falls to 21°. The record high is 69°, in 1953; the record low −8°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Moffit 3 SE, 20 miles southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
