The Oral 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
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−15° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is −13° in 1986.
Oral’s center stands about 3,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,920 ft to 3,240 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Battle Mountain, about 4,380 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace Deposits (coarse-detrital, clay), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Claystone, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 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. 4 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 Oral reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sand Creek, the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,510 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 Oral; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oral has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Oral normally reaches 50° and falls to 21°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low −11°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.06 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Oral, here, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
