The Bridger 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
75° on Nov. 13, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 75° in 2016.
Bridger’s center stands about 1,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,850 ft to 2,360 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country.
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 28×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
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 Bridger reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,360 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 Bridger; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bridger has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Bridger normally reaches 47° and falls to 24°. The record high is 73°, in 2025; the record low −25°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Milesville 5 NE, 15 miles east, 370 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
