The Salt Creek 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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83° on Nov. 11, 1971, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 82° in 1989.
Salt Creek’s center stands about 4,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,610 ft to 4,860 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rock Creek Hill, about 5,710 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 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 Salt Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Salt Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
960 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Salt Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salt Creek has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Salt Creek normally reaches 57° and falls to 25°. The record high is 82°, in 1990; the record low −8°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Pueblo Area threaded record (Pueblo Memorial Airport, 6 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
