The White Horse 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is 79° in 1999.
White Horse’s center stands about 2,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,490 ft to 2,750 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rosebud Butte, about 2,790 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
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 34×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 4 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 White Horse reaches the Gulf of America by way of Antelope Creek, the Keya Paha, the Niobrara, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,200 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 White Horse; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
White Horse has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 White Horse normally reaches 48° and falls to 23°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −21°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Mission 14 S, 14 miles south, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
