The Cheney 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.
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Showers likely
85° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 80° in 2016.
Cheney’s center stands about 1,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale, sandstone, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 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 Cheney reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hickman Branch, Wahoo Creek, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,850 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 Cheney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cheney has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Cheney normally reaches 52° and falls to 28°. The record high is 78°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.07 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Lincoln Airport, 12 miles northwest, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
