The Albin 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−21° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is −12° in 1986.
Albin’s center stands about 5,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,250 ft to 5,420 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flattop, about 5,540 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Miocene Rocks (sandstone, claystone, conglomerate), from the Late Miocene, 5.3 to 12 million years old.
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 27×. 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, claystone, conglomerate. Age: Late Miocene, 5.3 to 12 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Albin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lodgepole Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,340 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Albin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Albin has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Albin normally reaches 52° and falls to 21°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Harrisburg 12 WNW, 17 miles north-northeast, 800 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
