The Nelson 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
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 2025.
Nelson’s center stands about 1,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,660 ft to 1,800 ft, a difference of 140 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 15 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 4 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 Nelson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elk Creek, the Little Blue, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,890 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 Nelson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nelson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Nelson normally reaches 53° and falls to 26°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 1°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Superior, 12 miles south, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
