The Fort Collins 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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79° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1894.
Fort Collins’s center stands about 5,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,910 ft to 5,140 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ethel, about 8,420 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older gravels and alluviums (gravel, unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 7 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 Fort Collins reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cache la Poudre, 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 Fort Collins; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Collins has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Collins normally reaches 53° and falls to 27°. The record high is 78°, in 1894; the record low −13°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Fort Collins, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
