The Omaha 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
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
5.62 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1905. The next wettest, 4.65 inches, fell in 1971.
Omaha’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 0.7 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 Omaha reaches the Gulf of America by way of Okry Creek, Boggy Creek, Big Cypress Creek, Big Cypress Bayou, Twelvemile Bayou, Cross Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 530 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Clear Lake and Lake O' the Pines.
260 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Omaha; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Omaha has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Omaha normally reaches 66° and falls to 41°. The record high is 88°, in 2005; the record low 17°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.12 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Mount Pleasant, 16 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
