The Hartsel 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. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 65° in 2016.
Hartsel’s center stands about 8,910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,800 ft to 9,350 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Schoolmarm Mountain, about 11,290 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 35 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Late Eocene, 35 to 36 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arkose, gravel. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 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 Hartsel reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork South Platte, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Elevenmile Canyon Reservoir and Spinney Mountain Reservoir.
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 Hartsel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hartsel has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Hartsel normally reaches 43° and falls to 10°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −31°, in 1961. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Antero Reservoir, 5 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
