The Liberal 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
86° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 86° in 2016.
Liberal’s center stands about 2,850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,800 ft to 2,890 ft, a difference of 90 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 5 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.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, 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.
Liberal has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Liberal normally reaches 59° and falls to 29°. The record high is 80°, in 2007; the record low 2°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Liberal, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
