The Atkinson 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 82° in 2025.
Atkinson’s center stands about 2,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,060 ft to 2,130 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Group or Formation (siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 24 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 Atkinson reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,050 river miles.
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 Atkinson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atkinson has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 33 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Atkinson normally reaches 48° and falls to 24°. The record high is 81°, in 1953; the record low −18°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1919.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Atkinson 3 SW, 3 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
