The Pine Valley 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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−16° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −6° in 1951.
Pine Valley’s center stands about 8,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,450 ft to 9,980 ft, a difference of 2,530 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Blue Sky, about 14,200 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotitic gneiss, schist, and migmatite (biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 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.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 64 million years old. About 0.3 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 Pine Valley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Brook, Clear Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,420 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 Pine Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pine Valley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in December. A normal year brings about 106 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Pine Valley normally reaches 45° and falls to 22°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Georgetown, 15 miles west, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
