The Lemmon 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
77° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is 72° in 2001.
Lemmon’s center stands about 2,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,490 ft to 2,660 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White Butte, about 2,910 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tongue River Formation (sandstone, claystone, siltstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 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 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million 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. 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 Lemmon reaches the Gulf of America by way of Plum Creek, Cedar Creek, the Cannonball, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,630 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 Lemmon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lemmon has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Lemmon normally reaches 44° and falls to 22°. The record high is 70°, in 2001; the record low −23°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1973.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Lemmon, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
