The Fritch 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
9° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 12° in 2014.
Fritch’s center stands about 3,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,840 ft to 3,300 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hackberry Mesa, about 3,350 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Formation (sand), from the Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. 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: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 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.
A raindrop that lands in Fritch reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,530 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Fritch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fritch has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 19 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fritch normally reaches 63° and falls to 31°. The record high is 85°, in 2007; the record low 14°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.42 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Sanford Dam, 5 miles north-northeast, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
