The Wheatland 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.
−2° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 1° in 1986.
Wheatland’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ancell Group (sandstone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Wheatland reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wheatland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wheatland has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Wheatland normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 69°, in 1990; the record low 6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.31 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Genoa Dam 8, 8 miles north-northwest, 560 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.