The La Junta 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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−7° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 6° in 2000.
La Junta’s center stands about 4,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,040 ft to 4,250 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Meredith Hill, about 4,400 ft, 11 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.3 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 La Junta reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,780 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
880 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of La Junta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Junta has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 La Junta normally reaches 57° and falls to 26°. The record high is 82°, in 2007; the record low −7°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.28 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at La Junta, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
