The Meeteetse 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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−30° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is −17° in 1978.
Meeteetse’s center stands about 5,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,640 ft to 6,610 ft, a difference of 970 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Soapy Dale Peak, about 7,840 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, shale, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Meeteetse reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Greybull, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,280 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 Meeteetse; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Meeteetse has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in December. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Meeteetse normally reaches 46° and falls to 19°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −22°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.42 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Cody 12 SE, 18 miles north, 520 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
