The Hill City 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 cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−19° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is −12° in 2019.
Hill City’s center stands about 5,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,790 ft to 5,820 ft, a difference of 1,030 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Odakota Mountain, about 7,180 ft, 9 miles west.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, phyllite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 10 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Hill City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Spring Creek, the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,550 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 Hill City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hill City has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 67 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Hill City normally reaches 49° and falls to 18°. The record high is 73°, in 2025; the record low −19°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Hill City, here, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
