The Big Bow 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.
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
2° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 4° in 2019.
Big Bow’s center stands about 3,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,110 ft to 3,220 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Loess (silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, 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.
Big Bow has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Bow normally reaches 59° and falls to 30°. The record high is 82°, in 2007; the record low 3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 2003.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Johnson, 11 miles west, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
