The Niobrara 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1953.
Niobrara’s center stands about 1,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Butte, about 1,700 ft, 11 miles southwest.
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 35×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Limestone, 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 Niobrara reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lewis and Clark 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 Niobrara; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Niobrara has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Niobrara normally reaches 46° and falls to 24°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Tyndall, 19 miles north-northeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
