The Mesa Verde 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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93° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 90° in 1973.
Mesa Verde’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McCoy Peak, about 1,960 ft, 8 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 170 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 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.
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.
Mesa Verde has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 108° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mesa Verde normally reaches 78° and falls to 50°. The record high is 91°, in 1999; the record low 32°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Blythe Asos, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
