The Ralston 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 76° in 1964.
Ralston’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
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 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 million years old. About 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 Ralston reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Papillion Creek, Papillion Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,770 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 Ralston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ralston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Ralston normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Omaha Area threaded record (Omaha Eppley Airfield, 10 miles northeast, 100 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
