The Atwood 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 1990.
Atwood’s center stands about 4,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,960 ft to 4,090 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Eagle Point Hill, about 4,600 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Modern alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 0.5 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 Atwood reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,240 river miles.
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 Atwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atwood has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Atwood normally reaches 51° and falls to 25°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.42 in, fell in 1906.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Leroy 5 WSW, 15 miles east, 460 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
