The Bethune 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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Chance of showers; warmer
84° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 82° in 2021.
Bethune’s center stands about 4,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,130 ft to 4,300 ft, a difference of 170 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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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 Bethune reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bonny Creek, the South Fork Republican, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,210 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 Bethune; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethune has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Bethune normally reaches 54° and falls to 27°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low −8°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.36 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Burlington, 9 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
