The Pringle 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
−11° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is −6° in 2019.
Pringle’s center stands about 4,910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,670 ft to 5,470 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Atlantic Hill, about 6,370 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, metaconglomerate, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 307 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Late Ordovician, 445 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 3 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 Pringle reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Fall, the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,550 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 Pringle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pringle has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 46 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Pringle normally reaches 49° and falls to 24°. The record high is 72°, in 1990; the record low −3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Wind Cave, 7 miles east-southeast, 760 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
