The Gurley 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−15° on Nov. 14, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is −8° in 1986.
Gurley’s center stands about 4,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,200 ft to 4,320 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently 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.
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 42×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.8 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 Gurley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rush Creek, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,230 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 Gurley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gurley has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Gurley normally reaches 52° and falls to 25°. The record high is 78°, in 1928; the record low −15°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Sidney 6 NNW, 7 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
