The Little Ponderosa 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
Showers likely
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
86° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 86° in 2016.
Little Ponderosa’s center stands about 2,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,760 ft to 2,840 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dune Sand (fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. 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, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 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.
Little Ponderosa has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Little Ponderosa normally reaches 59° and falls to 29°. The record high is 80°, in 2007; the record low 2°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Liberal, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
