The Morland 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
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
85° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 84° in 2025.
Morland’s center stands about 2,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,270 ft to 2,500 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
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 2 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, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Silt. 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 Morland reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Solomon, the Solomon, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,080 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waconda 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 Morland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morland has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morland normally reaches 56° and falls to 28°. The record high is 84°, in 2025; the record low −10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Hill City Municipal Airport, 13 miles east, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
