The White Shield 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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71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 1953.
White Shield’s center stands about 2,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,950 ft to 2,100 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Hill, about 2,260 ft, 12 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sentinel Butte Formation (siltstone, claystone, sandstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 24 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 White Shield reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Branch Douglas Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,580 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 White Shield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
White Shield has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 White Shield normally reaches 38° and falls to 20°. The record high is 64°, in 2001; the record low −7°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Garrison, 20 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
