The Dodge City 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.
86° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 84° in 1911.
Dodge City’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wornock Mountain, about 1,430 ft, 11 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (lower part) (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 Dodge City reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Simpson Creek, the Sipsey Fork, the Mulberry Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 470 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lewis Smith Lake.
170 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dodge City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dodge City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dodge City normally reaches 64° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.85 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Saint Bernard, 10 miles north-northeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.