The Culbertson 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; warmer
82° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 81° in 1941.
Culbertson’s center stands about 2,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,550 ft to 2,780 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 50×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 11 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 Culbertson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Frenchman Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,070 river miles.
Lake on the way: Harlan County 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 Culbertson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Culbertson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 92° 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 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Culbertson normally reaches 54° and falls to 24°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.17 in, fell in 1921.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Culbertson, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
