The North Washington 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.
80° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 79° in 1990.
North Washington’s center stands about 5,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,090 ft to 5,380 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lookout Mountain, about 7,420 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older gravels and alluviums (gravel, unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Arkose, shale, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 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. 1 smaller unit 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 North Washington reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,400 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 North Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Washington has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 North Washington normally reaches 56° and falls to 26°. The record high is 79°, in 1990; the record low −5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Denver-Central Park, 7 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.