The Hamill 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
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Showers likely
84° on Nov. 14, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 81° in 2025.
Hamill’s center stands about 1,760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,660 ft to 2,020 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bradleyon Butte, about 2,320 ft, 8 miles south-southwest.
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 22×. 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.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Hamill reaches the Gulf of America by way of the White River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,160 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Hamill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hamill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Hamill normally reaches 50° and falls to 26°. The record high is 84°, in 1953; the record low −13°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.24 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Winner, 18 miles south-southwest, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
