The Holyoke 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
Mostly sunny
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Mostly sunny
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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.
Holyoke’s center stands about 3,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,700 ft to 3,780 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fiddler Peak, about 4,000 ft, 9 miles south-southwest.
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 56×. 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 Holyoke reaches the Gulf of America by way of Frenchman Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,210 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 Holyoke; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Holyoke 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 Holyoke 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, 3 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
