The Ouray 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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73° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1982. Next is 71° in 1999.
Ouray’s center stands about 7,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,600 ft to 12,430 ft, a difference of 4,830 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Uncompahgre Peak, about 14,240 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Andesite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian to Late Triassic, 202 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, slate, phyllite. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Ouray reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Uncompahgre, the Gunnison and the Colorado: about 1,280 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 Ouray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ouray has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 81 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Ouray normally reaches 52° and falls to 17°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low −7°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1982 at Ridgway, 10 miles north-northwest, 690 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
