The Ola 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 sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 80° in 2005.
Ola’s center stands about 1,730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,680 ft to 1,890 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twilight Butte, about 2,180 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. 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 22 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, siltstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.6 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 Ola reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elm Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,110 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Ola; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ola has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Ola normally reaches 47° and falls to 24°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.17 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Chamberlain 5 S, 11 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
