The Mitchell 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.
Mostly cloudy
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.
Mitchell’s center stands about 3,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,920 ft to 4,080 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Hat, about 4,660 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
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 26×. 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 22 mi of the line.
Sand, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 2 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 Mitchell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,270 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 Mitchell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mitchell 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 Mitchell 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, 12 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
