The Sprague 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
79° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 2025.
Sprague’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,230 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 58×. 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, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.8 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 Sprague reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wahoo Creek, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,840 river miles.
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 Sprague; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sprague has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Sprague normally reaches 52° and falls to 29°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.91 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Crete 4 ESE, 7 miles west, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
