The Brewster 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.
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; warmer
82° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 80° in 1941.
Brewster’s center stands about 3,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,320 ft to 3,460 ft, a difference of 140 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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. 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 22 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Brewster reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Fork Sappa Creek, Sappa Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,200 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 Brewster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Brewster has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Brewster normally reaches 54° and falls to 26°. The record high is 79°, in 2025; the record low −4°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Goodland Area threaded record (Goodland Renner Field, 17 miles west, 210 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
