The Minturn 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.
Mostly cloudy
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Partly cloudy; warmer
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Chance of showers; cooler
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62° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 61° in 1980.
Minturn’s center stands about 10,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,010 ft to 11,150 ft, a difference of 3,140 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount of the Holy Cross, about 13,950 ft, 7 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Minturn Fm in west-central and south-central and other units (arkose, conglomerate, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Carboniferous, 324 to 542 million years old. About 0.4 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 Minturn reaches the Gulf of California by way of Rock Creek, the Eagle and the Colorado: about 1,320 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 Minturn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minturn has a subarctic climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Minturn normally reaches 40° and falls to 14°. The record high is 57°, in 1903; the record low −22°, in 1961. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Sugarloaf Reservoir, 20 miles south, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
