The Elgin 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 79° in 1999.
Elgin’s center stands about 1,940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,850 ft to 2,050 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country.
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 44×. 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 Elgin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Blacksnake Creek, Cedar Creek, the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,980 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 Elgin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elgin has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Elgin normally reaches 48° and falls to 26°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Elgin, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
