The Wauneta 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
Chance of showers; warmer
82° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 77° in 2007.
Wauneta’s center stands about 2,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,910 ft to 3,240 ft, a difference of 330 ft: 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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. 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 Wauneta reaches the Gulf of America by way of Frenchman Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,120 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 Wauneta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wauneta has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wauneta normally reaches 53° and falls to 25°. The record high is 82°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.07 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Imperial Municipal Airport, 15 miles west-northwest, 320 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
