The Wall 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−25° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is −13° in 1986.
Wall’s center stands about 2,820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,660 ft to 2,890 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
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 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.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Wall reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cottonwood Creek, Lake Creek, Cottonwood Creek, the South Fork Bad, the Bad River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,450 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 Wall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wall has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Wall normally reaches 50° and falls to 22°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low −25°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Wasta, 11 miles west-northwest, 490 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
