The Great Bend 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
9° on Nov. 16, 1967, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is 12° in 1959.
Great Bend’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,730 ft, a difference of 880 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Slocum Hill, about 2,040 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lock Haven Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.4 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 Great Bend reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Susquehanna: about 350 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Great Bend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Great Bend has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Great Bend normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 66°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 from the Binghamton Area threaded record (Binghamton (Greater Ap), 20 miles northwest, 700 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
