The Great Bend 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 sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
−2° on Nov. 14, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1923. Next is −2° in 2019.
Great Bend’s center stands about 980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 30 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devils Nest, about 1,140 ft, 8 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Belle Fourche-Skull Creek, Undivided (shale, sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 64×. 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, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Precambrian. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.6 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 Great Bend reaches Hudson Bay by way of South Branch Antelope Creek, Antelope Creek, the Wild Rice, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,180 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: Lake Winnipeg.
470 miles of the trip are on the Red River of the North.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Great Bend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Great Bend has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Great Bend normally reaches 40° and falls to 22°. The record high is 69°, in 2001; the record low −2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Victor 4 N, 16 miles south, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
