The Western 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
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
79° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 78° in 2016.
Western’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,370 ft to 1,560 ft, a difference of 190 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 3 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.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 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 Western reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Fork Swan Creek, Swan Creek, Turkey Creek, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tuttle Creek 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 Western; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Western has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Friend 3 E, 18 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
