The Amherst 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
86° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 85° in 1967.
Amherst’s center stands about 3,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,610 ft to 3,680 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
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 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 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.
Amherst has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Amherst normally reaches 64° and falls to 32°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low 6°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.38 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Littlefield, 13 miles southeast, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
