The Almena 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Chance of showers; warmer
86° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 83° in 2016.
Almena’s center stands about 2,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,130 ft to 2,310 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Horseshoe Hill, about 2,410 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 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 Almena reaches the Gulf of America by way of Prairie Dog Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
Lake on the way: Harlan County Lake.
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 Almena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Almena has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Almena normally reaches 56° and falls to 28°. The record high is 86°, in 1999; the record low −11°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Norton 9 SSE, 12 miles south-southwest, 250 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
