The Highlands Ranch 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.
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−11° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is −9° in 1955.
Highlands Ranch’s center stands about 5,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,480 ft to 6,110 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huebner Peak, about 8,650 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Denver Fm or lower part of Dawson Arkose (arkose, shale, mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 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 8×. 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, shale, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 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. 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 Highlands Ranch reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,420 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 Highlands Ranch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Highlands Ranch has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 62 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Highlands Ranch normally reaches 55° and falls to 26°. The record high is 79°, in 1933; the record low −6°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Kassler, 8 miles west-southwest, 210 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
