The Kearney 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 69° in 2012.
Kearney’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Deadmans Hill, about 1,340 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ellsworth Shale, from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 24×. 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. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 24 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.2 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 Kearney reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Cedar River, the Grass and the Torch: about 35 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Torch Lake and Elk Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kearney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kearney has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in February. A normal year brings about 112 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Kearney normally reaches 45° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1974.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Boyne Falls, 16 miles northeast, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
