The Shell 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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−20° on Nov. 14, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is −15° in 1986.
Shell’s center stands about 4,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,100 ft to 4,750 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hunt Mountain, about 10,140 ft, 13 miles north.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale, dolostone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 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 Shell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shell Creek, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,230 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 Shell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shell has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Shell normally reaches 46° and falls to 19°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −20°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 at Shell, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
