The Aetna Estates 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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80° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 79° in 1990.
Aetna Estates’s center stands about 5,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,470 ft to 5,700 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Denver Fm or lower part of Dawson Arkose (arkose, shale, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 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 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, shale, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.6 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 Aetna Estates reaches the Gulf of America by way of First Creek, Second Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,410 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 Aetna Estates; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Aetna Estates has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Aetna Estates normally reaches 54° and falls to 27°. The record high is 79°, in 1990; the record low −7°, in 1872. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Denver Area threaded record (Denver International Airport, 8 miles north, 210 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
