The Merna 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 81° in 1941.
Merna’s center stands about 2,670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,600 ft to 2,850 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is East Table, about 2,880 ft, 2 miles north-northeast.
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 36×. 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 Merna reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Branch Mud Creek, Mud Creek, the South Loup, the Middle Loup, the Loup, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,080 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 Merna; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Merna has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Merna normally reaches 51° and falls to 22°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low −12°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.16 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Broken Bow 2 W, 7 miles southeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
