The Wood Lake 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.
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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Chance of showers
−22° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is −18° in 1891.
Wood Lake’s center stands about 2,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,640 ft to 2,780 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently 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 32×. 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 Wood Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Plum Creek, the Niobrara, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,160 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Wood Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wood Lake has a dry-winter hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Wood Lake normally reaches 51° and falls to 22°. The record high is 81°, in 2025; the record low −22°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.38 in, fell in 1891.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 from the Valentine Area threaded record (Valentine Miller Field Airport, 22 miles northwest, 100 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
