The Moffat 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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70° on Nov. 17, 1929, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 68° in 1914.
Moffat’s center stands about 7,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,550 ft to 7,590 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Owen, about 13,290 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Unclassified surficial deposits and underlying Alamosa Fm in San Luis Valley (unconsolidated), from the Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Moffat reaches the closed basin of the San Luis Valley by way of San Luis Creek: about 45 river miles. The closed basin of the San Luis Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moffat; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moffat has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Moffat normally reaches 50° and falls to 21°. The record high is 68°, in 1914; the record low −8°, in 1898. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Saguache, 14 miles west-northwest, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
