The Johnstown 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
81° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 79° in 2025.
Johnstown’s center stands about 4,860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,740 ft to 4,970 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mariana Butte, about 5,200 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 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 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.
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 Johnstown reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,360 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 Johnstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Johnstown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Johnstown normally reaches 54° and falls to 22°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −6°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Loveland 2 N, 11 miles northwest, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
