The Lawrence 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 81° in 1999.
Lawrence’s center stands about 1,880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,770 ft to 1,950 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Formation (limestone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.7 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 Lawrence reaches the Gulf of America by way of Moorehouse Creek, Liberty Creek, the Little Blue, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,900 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tuttle Creek 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 Lawrence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lawrence has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 26 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lawrence normally reaches 52° and falls to 29°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low −7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the Hastings Area threaded record (Hastings Municipal Airport, 23 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
