The Copper Mountain 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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−20° on Nov. 12, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −18° in 1955.
Copper Mountain’s center stands about 11,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 9,950 ft to 12,600 ft, a difference of 2,650 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lincoln, about 14,230 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maroon Fm (arkose, siltstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. 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, siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granitic, dioritic. Age: Late Cretaceous to Middle Eocene, 40 to 72 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 2 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 Copper Mountain reaches the Gulf of California by way of Guller Creek, West Tenmile Creek, Tenmile Creek, the Blue River and the Colorado: about 1,400 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
380 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Copper Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Copper Mountain has a subarctic climate. Summer afternoons average 67° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 295 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Copper Mountain normally reaches 36° and falls to 12°. The record high is 58°, in 1999; the record low −15°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Climax, 8 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
