The Laporte 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
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Mostly sunny
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Chance of showers
79° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1894.
Laporte’s center stands about 5,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,990 ft to 5,520 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Boiler Hill, about 8,880 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Modern alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 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. 4 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 Laporte reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cache la Poudre, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,380 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 Laporte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laporte has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Laporte normally reaches 53° and falls to 27°. The record high is 78°, in 1894; the record low −13°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Fort Collins, 4 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
