The Mills 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
−27° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is −19° in 2000.
Mills’s center stands about 5,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,110 ft to 5,540 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Muddy Mountain, about 8,290 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Permian, 252 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Early Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 1.0 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 Mills reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,490 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 Mills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mills has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Mills normally reaches 47° and falls to 23°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 from the Casper Area threaded record (Casper-Natrona County Airport, 7 miles northwest, 190 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
