The Orleans 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.
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80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 80° in 2025.
Orleans’s center stands about 2,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,960 ft to 2,140 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sappa Peak, about 2,230 ft, 6 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Orleans reaches the Gulf of America by way of Flag Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lake on the way: Harlan County 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 Orleans; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orleans has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Orleans normally reaches 54° and falls to 27°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Harlan County Lake, 13 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
