The Marble 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.
Chance of showers
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Showers likely
65° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 63° in 1939.
Marble’s center stands about 8,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,800 ft to 11,740 ft, a difference of 3,940 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maroon Bells, about 14,050 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mancos Shale (shale, sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mafic-hypabyssal, felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, limestone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 3 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 Marble reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Crystal, the Roaring Fork and the Colorado: about 1,300 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Marble; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marble has a subarctic climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about −6° in January. A normal year brings about 203 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Marble normally reaches 40° and falls to 10°. The record high is 60°, in 1999; the record low −19°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Crested Butte, 18 miles southeast, 860 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
