The Kenel 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.
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−21° on Nov. 14, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is −16° in 1911.
Kenel’s center stands about 1,980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,600 ft to 2,020 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lonesome Butte, about 2,270 ft, 8 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian Deposits (silt, sand), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Kenel reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Oahe, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,390 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 Kenel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kenel has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Kenel normally reaches 42° and falls to 21°. The record high is 71°, in 1975; the record low −21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Pollock, 9 miles east-northeast, 340 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
