The Kanorado 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
84° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 82° in 2021.
Kanorado’s center stands about 3,910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,830 ft to 3,970 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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 4 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 Kanorado reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Beaver Creek, Beaver Creek, Sappa Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,230 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 Kanorado; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kanorado has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Kanorado normally reaches 54° and falls to 27°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low −8°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.36 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Burlington, 12 miles west, 250 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
