The Ralston 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, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1981. Next is 76° in 2025.
Ralston’s center stands about 4,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,360 ft to 4,740 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Heart Mountain, about 8,000 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, pediment, and fan deposits, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Ralston reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Shoshone, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,220 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 Ralston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ralston has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 7 inches of water.
On November 14 Ralston normally reaches 44° and falls to 18°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1981 at Powell Field Station, 7 miles northeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
