The Pueblo West 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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−7° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1975. Next is −4° in 1997.
Pueblo West’s center stands about 5,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,930 ft to 5,230 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Booth Mountain, about 6,460 ft, 13 miles 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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 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.
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 Pueblo West reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
980 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pueblo West; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pueblo West 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 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Pueblo West normally reaches 57° and falls to 27°. The record high is 83°, in 1998; the record low −2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1975 at Pueblo Reservoir, 6 miles south, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
