The Frannie 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.
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Chance of showers
70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1916. Next is 69° in 1934.
Frannie’s center stands about 4,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,130 ft to 4,690 ft, a difference of 560 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Red Pryor Mountain, about 8,440 ft, 13 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 17 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, black-shale. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 11 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Frannie reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sage Creek, the Shoshone, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,210 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sharpe and Lake Francis Case.
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 Frannie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Frannie has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 6 inches of water.
On November 14 Frannie normally reaches 46° and falls to 20°. The record high is 69°, in 1934; the record low −18°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.16 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Deaver, 6 miles south-southeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
