The Loveland 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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81° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 79° in 2025.
Loveland’s center stands about 4,990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,870 ft to 5,120 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sheep Mountain, about 8,450 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand, silt), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 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. 6 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 Loveland reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,370 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 Loveland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Loveland 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 Loveland 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, 3 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
