The Haxtun 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Chance of showers
80° on Nov. 16, 1941, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 1999.
Haxtun’s center stands about 4,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,980 ft to 4,100 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand, silt), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 47×. 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 18 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 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 Haxtun reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Frenchman Creek, Frenchman Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,230 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 Haxtun; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Haxtun 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 Haxtun 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, 17 miles east-southeast, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
