The Grand Lake 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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68° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 67° in 1998.
Grand Lake’s center stands about 8,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,370 ft to 10,490 ft, a difference of 2,120 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Longs Peak, about 14,220 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic rocks of 1700-m.y. age group (granite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 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. 3 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 Grand Lake reaches the Gulf of California by way of Little Columbine Creek and the Colorado: about 1,390 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
420 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 Grand Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grand Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 155 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Grand Lake normally reaches 41° and falls to 14°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low −14°, in 1961. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Grand Lake 1 NW, here, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
