The Cottonwood 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
82° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 82° in 2005.
Cottonwood’s center stands about 2,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,350 ft to 2,640 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bliss Hill, about 2,880 ft, 11 miles northwest.
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 4 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 9 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 Cottonwood reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cottonwood Creek, the South Fork Bad, the Bad River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,410 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 Cottonwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cottonwood has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Cottonwood normally reaches 48° and falls to 20°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low −29°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Cottonwood 2 E, 2 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
