The Speed 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
83° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 80° in 1980.
Speed’s center stands about 1,850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,810 ft to 2,040 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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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 Speed reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Solomon, the Solomon, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,030 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Waconda Lake and Kirwin 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 Speed; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Speed has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 26 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Speed normally reaches 55° and falls to 25°. The record high is 78°, in 2025; the record low 1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 2002.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Kirwin Dam, 16 miles east, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
