The Vale 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 sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
79° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1920. Next is 75° in 1990.
Vale’s center stands about 2,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,710 ft to 2,980 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Butte, about 4,380 ft, 10 miles south.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.4 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 Vale reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Belle Fourche, 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 Vale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vale has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Vale normally reaches 46° and falls to 21°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −24°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Newell, 7 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
