The Kearney 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
Mostly sunny
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Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 81° in 1999.
Kearney’s center stands about 2,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,120 ft to 2,280 ft, a difference of 160 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 61×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 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 Kearney reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Channel Platte, 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 Kearney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kearney has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Kearney normally reaches 51° and falls to 26°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Kearney 4 NE, 4 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
