The Sugar City 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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84° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 82° in 1989.
Sugar City’s center stands about 4,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,250 ft to 4,360 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Nero Hill, about 4,620 ft, 8 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Fm (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 1 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 Sugar City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Meredith, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Meredith, Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
890 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sugar City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sugar City has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Sugar City normally reaches 57° and falls to 22°. The record high is 78°, in 2025; the record low 10°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1915 at Ordway 4 W, 9 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
