The Kim 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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83° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1988. Next is 79° in 2005.
Kim’s center stands about 5,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,520 ft to 5,730 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Seven L Buttes, about 6,540 ft, 13 miles 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.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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 Kim reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tecolate Creek, West Carrizo Creek, North Carrizo Creek, the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Cimarron.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kim; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kim has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Kim normally reaches 59° and falls to 29°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1988 at Kim 10 SSE, 10 miles south-southeast, 440 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
