The Abilene 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
84° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 83° in 2016.
Abilene’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
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.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.6 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 Abilene reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mud Creek, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,750 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 Abilene; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Abilene has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Abilene normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 2025; the record low 6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Abilene, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
