The Platte Colony 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 81° in 1953.
Platte Colony’s center stands about 1,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 1,840 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Butte, about 2,010 ft, 7 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 25×. 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, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, siltstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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 Platte Colony reaches the Gulf of America by way of Snake Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,090 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 Platte Colony; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Platte Colony has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Platte Colony normally reaches 47° and falls to 25°. The record high is 78°, in 1953; the record low −20°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Academy 2 NE, 4 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
