The Dawson 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
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 79° in 2005.
Dawson’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 930 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Albany Hill, about 1,280 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Council Grove Group (shale, limestone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Dawson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Barneys Branch, the North Fork Big Nemaha, the Big Nemaha, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,680 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 Dawson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dawson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dawson normally reaches 53° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Falls City Brenner Field, 13 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
