The McGrew 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1894.
McGrew’s center stands about 3,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,760 ft to 4,030 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bead Mountain, about 4,570 ft, 10 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows White River Group (clay), from the Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 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 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Sand, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 28 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 McGrew reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,240 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 McGrew; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McGrew has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in December. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 McGrew normally reaches 52° and falls to 23°. The record high is 78°, in 1894; the record low −14°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Scottsbluff Area threaded record (Scottsbluff W B Heilig Field Airport, 13 miles northwest, 180 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
