The Grainfield 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
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
84° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 83° in 2016.
Grainfield’s center stands about 2,820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,680 ft to 2,830 ft, a difference of 150 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 53×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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.
A raindrop that lands in Grainfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Big Creek, Big Creek, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,140 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 Grainfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grainfield has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Grainfield normally reaches 54° and falls to 28°. The record high is 75°, in 1962; the record low −5°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.15 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Quinter, 13 miles east-southeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
