The Niwot 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Chance of showers
−14° on Nov. 11, 1950, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −13° in 1916.
Niwot’s center stands about 5,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,000 ft to 5,400 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugarloaf Mountain, about 8,880 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 15 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.
Sandstone, shale, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, claystone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose, 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. 9 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 Niwot reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, Saint Vrain Creek, 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 Niwot; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Niwot has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Niwot normally reaches 54° and falls to 24°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low −6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Longmont 2 ESE, 7 miles northeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
