The Medicine Bow 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
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
68° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1881. Next is 67° in 1953.
Medicine Bow’s center stands about 6,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,540 ft to 6,750 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Windy Hill, about 8,320 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and Colluvium (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 82 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 8 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 Medicine Bow reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Medicine Bow, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,660 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Seminoe Reservoir and Pathfinder Reservoir.
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 Medicine Bow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Medicine Bow has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Medicine Bow normally reaches 43° and falls to 18°. The record high is 67°, in 1953; the record low −6°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1881 at Medicine Bow, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
