The Box Elder 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
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
78° on Nov. 12, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 78° in 1999.
Box Elder’s center stands about 3,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,990 ft to 3,380 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Turkey Hill, about 4,050 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, mudstone, marlstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Box Elder reaches the Gulf of America by way of Boxelder Creek, the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,480 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 Box Elder; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Box Elder has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Box Elder normally reaches 48° and falls to 22°. The record high is 78°, in 1990; the record low −19°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 from the Rapid City Area threaded record (Rapid City Regional Airport, 5 miles south, 130 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
