The Britton 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 2001.
Britton’s center stands about 1,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pleasant Peak, about 2,060 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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 24 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 Britton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Crow Creek, the James, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,400 river miles.
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 Britton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Britton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Britton normally reaches 40° and falls to 20°. The record high is 72°, in 1953; the record low −13°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.53 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Britton, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
