The Amherst 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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80° on Nov. 16, 1941, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 1999.
Amherst’s center stands about 3,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,650 ft to 3,730 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Fm (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 55×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 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 Amherst reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sand Creek, Frenchman Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,190 river miles.
Lake on the way: Harlan County Lake.
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 Amherst; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Amherst has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Amherst normally reaches 53° and falls to 22°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Holyoke, 13 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
