The Eagle Butte 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
76° on Nov. 16, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1963. Next is 75° in 1990.
Eagle Butte’s center stands about 2,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,230 ft to 2,450 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fox Hills Sandstone (sandstone, siltstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 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 Eagle Butte reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Moreau, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,450 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 Eagle Butte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Eagle Butte has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Eagle Butte normally reaches 45° and falls to 23°. The record high is 72°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1963 at Dupree 15 SSE, 15 miles southwest, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
