The Aristocrat Ranchettes 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Chance of showers
−13° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1973. Next is −3° in 2000.
Aristocrat Ranchettes’s center stands about 5,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,870 ft to 5,150 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Riley Mound, about 5,190 ft, 1 miles northeast.
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 44×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, claystone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 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.
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 Aristocrat Ranchettes reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,370 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 Aristocrat Ranchettes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Aristocrat Ranchettes has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Aristocrat Ranchettes normally reaches 54° and falls to 26°. The record high is 81°, in 1990; the record low 0°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.17 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1973 at Brighton 3 SE, 12 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
