The Harrold 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
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Chance of showers
73° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 2001.
Harrold’s center stands about 1,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,710 ft to 1,870 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Medicine Knoll, about 2,030 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
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 50×. 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 Harrold reaches the Gulf of America by way of Medicine Knoll Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,250 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 Harrold; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Harrold has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Harrold normally reaches 44° and falls to 23°. The record high is 73°, in 2025; the record low −23°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.43 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Highmore, 15 miles east, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
