The Brownlee 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 80° in 2025.
Brownlee’s center stands about 2,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,830 ft to 3,020 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Giant Hill, about 3,390 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
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 58×. 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 Brownlee reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Loup, the Loup, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,100 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 Brownlee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Brownlee has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 23 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Brownlee normally reaches 51° and falls to 29°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low −15°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Valentine Nwr, 20 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
