The Ruthven 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 sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
76° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 74° in 2001.
Ruthven’s center stands about 1,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,340 ft to 1,460 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakata and Windrow Formations (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 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 Ruthven reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Lost Island Outlet, the Little Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
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 Ruthven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ruthven has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 27 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ruthven normally reaches 45° and falls to 25°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low −17°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Spencer Area threaded record (Spencer Municipal Airport, 16 miles west, 100 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
