The Penrose 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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−7° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −6° in 1916.
Penrose’s center stands about 5,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,040 ft to 5,650 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cooper Mountain, about 9,150 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Niobrara Fm (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 3 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 Penrose reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,890 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
990 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Penrose; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Penrose has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Penrose normally reaches 58° and falls to 27°. The record high is 81°, in 1918; the record low −4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Canon City, 11 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
