The Stapleton 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−7° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is −3° in 2000.
Stapleton’s center stands about 2,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,850 ft to 3,080 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Garfield Table, about 3,060 ft, 5 miles south.
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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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.
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 Stapleton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Loup, the Middle Loup, the Loup, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,140 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 Stapleton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stapleton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Stapleton normally reaches 51° and falls to 23°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.04 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Stapleton 5 W, 5 miles west-southwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
