The Wanblee 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
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Partly cloudy
Showers likely
78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 77° in 1990.
Wanblee’s center stands about 2,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,470 ft to 2,800 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Eagle Nest Butte, about 3,400 ft, 7 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Arikaree Group (siltstone, sandstone), from the Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 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 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 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 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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 Wanblee reaches the Gulf of America by way of Craven Creek, the White River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,380 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Wanblee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wanblee has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Wanblee normally reaches 51° and falls to 26°. The record high is 76°, in 1990; the record low −21°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.39 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Interior 3 NE, 19 miles northwest, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
