The Roscoe 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 cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 16, 1941, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 80° in 1999.
Roscoe’s center stands about 3,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,140 ft to 3,420 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Bald Hill, about 3,480 ft, 15 miles northeast.
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 49×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 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 Roscoe reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,130 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 Roscoe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Roscoe has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Roscoe normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 79°, in 2025; the record low −6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Kingsley Dam, 7 miles northwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
