The Belvidere 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−28° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is −19° in 1986.
Belvidere’s center stands about 2,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,030 ft to 2,440 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cedar Butte, about 2,770 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. 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, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Belvidere reaches the Gulf of America by way of Brave Bull Creek, the Bad River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,360 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Belvidere; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belvidere has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Belvidere normally reaches 49° and falls to 20°. The record high is 76°, in 1975; the record low −28°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Midland, 17 miles north-northeast, 460 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
