The Big Springs 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
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−10° on Nov. 14, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −8° in 1955.
Big Springs’s center stands about 3,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,350 ft to 3,600 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Windlass Hill, about 3,650 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows White River Group (clay), from the Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 1 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 Big Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,150 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 Big Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Springs has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Springs normally reaches 52° and falls to 25°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ogallala, 19 miles east-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
