The Sanford 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.
Sanford’s center stands about 3,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,800 ft to 3,170 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Antelope Peak, about 3,340 ft, 8 miles south-southwest.
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 33×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Sanford reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,520 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 Sanford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sanford 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 Sanford 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
