The Craig 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 sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
−5° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is −4° in 2014.
Craig’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 49×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Craig reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bell Creek, the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,840 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 Craig; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Craig has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Craig normally reaches 50° and falls to 27°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.11 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Tekamah Municipal Airport, 10 miles east, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
