The Kaycee 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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78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 74° in 1990.
Kaycee’s center stands about 4,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,600 ft to 5,080 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Eagles Trap, about 7,480 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and Colluvium (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Permian to Late Triassic, 202 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Kaycee reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork Powder, the Powder River, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,320 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 Kaycee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kaycee has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Kaycee normally reaches 48° and falls to 19°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −21°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.26 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Kaycee, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
