The Goodwell 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.
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
86° on Nov. 12, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 85° in 2025.
Goodwell’s center stands about 3,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,230 ft to 3,350 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleistocene and Pliocene deposits, undifferentiated (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 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 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Goodwell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Beaver, the North Canadian, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,670 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Canton Lake, Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Goodwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goodwell has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Goodwell normally reaches 60° and falls to 30°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Goodwell Research Station, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
