The Newcastle 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 sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
80° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 1953.
Newcastle’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cottonwood Hill, about 1,540 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 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 Newcastle reaches the Gulf of America by way of Aowa Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,920 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 Newcastle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Newcastle has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Newcastle normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low −24°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Vermillion 2 SE, 8 miles north-northwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
