The Pierce 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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83° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1967. Next is 80° in 1999.
Pierce’s center stands about 5,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,950 ft to 5,140 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wildhorse Tit, about 5,430 ft, 15 miles northeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. 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, claystone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 1 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 Pierce reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cache la Poudre, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,350 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 Pierce; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pierce has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Pierce normally reaches 54° and falls to 26°. The record high is 78°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1967 at Greeley Unc, 16 miles south, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
