The Bison 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Chance of showers
77° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1916. Next is 72° in 1953.
Bison’s center stands about 2,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,570 ft to 2,810 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rocky Hills, about 2,960 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ludlow Formation (sandstone), 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 41×. 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. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Bison reaches the Gulf of America by way of Thunder Butte Creek, the Moreau, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,600 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 Bison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Bison normally reaches 44° and falls to 23°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low −17°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.29 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Bison, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
