The Sidney 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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83° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1933. Next is 78° in 2001.
Sidney’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale, mudstone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. 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, mudstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 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 Sidney reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Nishnabotna, the Nishnabotna, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,720 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 Sidney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sidney has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Sidney normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1933 at Nebraska City 2 NW, 13 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
