The Kit Carson 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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−10° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is −8° in 1916.
Kit Carson’s center stands about 4,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,230 ft to 4,350 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Buttes, about 4,610 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand, silt), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. 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 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 Kit Carson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wild Horse Creek, Big Sandy Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,760 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 Kit Carson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kit Carson has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Kit Carson normally reaches 56° and falls to 26°. The record high is 77°, in 1941; the record low −6°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Eads, 20 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
