The Pierre 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
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
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Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
79° on Nov. 13, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 2016.
Pierre’s center stands about 1,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,420 ft to 1,780 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Willow Creek Butte, about 2,080 ft, 13 miles west.
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 35×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Pierre reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,220 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Pierre; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pierre has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Pierre normally reaches 46° and falls to 24°. The record high is 72°, in 1939; the record low −18°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Pierre Regional Airport, 3 miles east-northeast, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
