The Turtle Lake 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
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 70° in 1953.
Turtle Lake’s center stands about 1,880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,820 ft to 1,950 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 56×. 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, 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 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 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 Turtle Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turtle Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,530 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 Turtle Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Turtle Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Turtle Lake normally reaches 39° and falls to 19°. The record high is 65°, in 2001; the record low −21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Turtle Lake, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
