The O'Neill 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1953.
O'Neill’s center stands about 2,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,950 ft to 2,030 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
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 59×. 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.3 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 O'Neill reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,020 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 O'Neill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
O'Neill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 O'Neill normally reaches 47° and falls to 24°. The record high is 78°, in 1953; the record low −19°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.28 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at O'Neill, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
