The Sinclair 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.
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−24° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is −15° in 1951.
Sinclair’s center stands about 6,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,520 ft to 6,840 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chokecherry Knob, about 8,120 ft, 9 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Steele Shale and Niobrara Formations (shale, limestone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 82 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Sinclair reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sugar Creek, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,630 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 Sinclair; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sinclair has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sinclair normally reaches 42° and falls to 21°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.17 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Rawlins Airport, 4 miles west-northwest, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
