The Running Water 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1953.
Running Water’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,530 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Butte, about 1,700 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Formation (chalk, marlstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 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 Running Water reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lewis and Clark Lake, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Running Water; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Running Water has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° 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 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Running Water normally reaches 46° and falls to 24°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Tyndall, 16 miles north-northeast, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
