The Elwood 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
84° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 81° in 1999.
Elwood’s center stands about 2,670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,490 ft to 2,700 ft, a difference of 210 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 47×. 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 Elwood reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Branch Turkey Creek, Turkey Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,020 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 Elwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elwood has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Elwood normally reaches 52° and falls to 27°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.21 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Canaday Steam Plant, 11 miles northeast, 310 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
