The Ten Sleep 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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−12° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is −6° in 2000.
Ten Sleep’s center stands about 4,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,350 ft to 4,930 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buttes, about 7,050 ft, 9 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 4 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 Ten Sleep reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tensleep Creek, the Nowood, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,300 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 Ten Sleep; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ten Sleep has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Ten Sleep normally reaches 47° and falls to 25°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1980.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Tensleep 4 NE, 4 miles east-northeast, 320 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
