The White 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−17° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −12° in 1997.
White’s center stands about 1,800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,690 ft to 1,930 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 50×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Chert, shale, chalk. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.8 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 White reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sixmile Creek, the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,190 river miles.
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 White; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
White has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 White normally reaches 42° and falls to 22°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −17°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.39 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Brookings 2 NE, 10 miles southwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
