The McDonald 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
4.57 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1920. The next wettest, 1.17 inches, fell in 2000.
McDonald’s center stands about 3,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,210 ft to 3,390 ft, a difference of 180 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 34×. 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 18 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 McDonald reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Beaver Creek, Little Beaver Creek, Beaver Creek, Sappa Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,150 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 McDonald; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McDonald has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 McDonald normally reaches 55° and falls to 25°. The record high is 80°, in 2007; the record low −13°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Atwood, 17 miles east, 480 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
