The Smithwick 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
76° on Nov. 12, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2005.
Smithwick’s center stands about 3,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,190 ft to 3,490 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tepee Mountain, about 3,780 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 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 Smithwick reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sand Creek, the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,530 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 Smithwick; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Smithwick has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Smithwick normally reaches 49° and falls to 22°. The record high is 75°, in 1953; the record low −21°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Oelrichs, 8 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
