The Sharon Springs 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.
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Chance of showers; warmer
−3° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −2° in 1959.
Sharon Springs’s center stands about 3,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,360 ft to 3,620 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rock Hill, about 3,890 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 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 Sharon Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Eagletail Creek, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Cedar Bluff Reservoir.
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 Sharon Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sharon Springs has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Sharon Springs normally reaches 55° and falls to 27°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Sharon Springs, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
