The Glendale 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
70° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 67° in 2005.
Glendale’s center stands about 7,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,360 ft to 8,790 ft, a difference of 2,430 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Apache Peak, about 13,400 ft, 15 miles west.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. 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 3 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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. 8 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 Glendale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Left Hand Creek, Saint Vrain Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,390 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 Glendale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Glendale has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 99 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at Gross Reservoir, 10 miles south, 440 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
