The Osborne 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; warmer
87° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 82° in 2012.
Osborne’s center stands about 1,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 1,750 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sand Mound, about 2,030 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Osborne 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 1,970 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 Osborne; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Osborne has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Osborne normally reaches 56° and falls to 26°. The record high is 87°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Alton 2 SW, 14 miles west, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
