The Hot Springs 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−21° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is −16° in 2014.
Hot Springs’s center stands about 3,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,360 ft to 4,320 ft, a difference of 960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Parker Peak, about 4,810 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Permian to Early Triassic, 247 to 260 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 8 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 Hot Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Fall, the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,530 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 Hot Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hot Springs has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Hot Springs normally reaches 51° and falls to 23°. The record high is 76°, in 1934; the record low −21°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Hot Springs, here, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
