The Arriba 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.
75° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 73° in 2005.
Arriba’s center stands about 5,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,130 ft to 5,330 ft, a difference of 200 ft: 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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. 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 24 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 Arriba reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buffalo Creek, the South Fork Republican, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,260 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Harlan County Lake and Swanson 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 Arriba; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Arriba has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in February. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Genoa, 12 miles west, 350 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.