The Hugo 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Mostly sunny
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Chance of showers
−21° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is −15° in 1955.
Hugo’s center stands about 5,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,990 ft to 5,200 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
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.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Hugo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Sandy Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
800 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hugo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hugo has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hugo normally reaches 53° and falls to 18°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Limon, 14 miles northwest, 310 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
