The Mission Hill 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1932. Next is 77° in 2021.
Mission Hill’s center stands about 1,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. 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. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 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 Mission Hill reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yankton Clay Ditch, the Vermillion, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
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 Mission Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mission Hill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1932 at Yankton Municipal Airport, 5 miles west, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
