The Madrid 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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82° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 2005.
Madrid’s center stands about 3,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,250 ft to 3,350 ft, a difference of 100 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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 Madrid reaches the Gulf of America by way of Stinking Water Creek, Frenchman Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,150 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 Madrid; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madrid has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Madrid normally reaches 52° and falls to 23°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.06 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Wallace 2 W, 17 miles east, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
