The Axtell 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 2025.
Axtell’s center stands about 2,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,200 ft to 2,240 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
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.
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 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.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Axtell reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Branch Thirtytwo Mile Creek, Thirtytwo Mile Creek, the Little Blue, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tuttle Creek Lake.
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 Axtell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Axtell has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Axtell normally reaches 51° and falls to 27°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Minden, 10 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
