The McFarland 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
84° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 2016.
McFarland’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tabor Hill, about 1,300 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), 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 36×. 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, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 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 McFarland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,660 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 McFarland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McFarland has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 McFarland normally reaches 55° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1990; the record low 3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.95 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Wamego 4 W, 13 miles north-northwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
