The Whitney 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
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−16° on Nov. 13, 1916, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is −16° in 2014.
Whitney’s center stands about 3,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,350 ft to 3,540 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is First Woman Mound, about 4,670 ft, 13 miles south.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sand, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 4 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 Whitney reaches the Gulf of America by way of the White River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,630 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Francis Case and Lewis and Clark 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 Whitney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Whitney has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 50 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Whitney normally reaches 51° and falls to 22°. The record high is 80°, in 1894; the record low −15°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Chadron 3 SW, 10 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
