The Silverton 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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69° on Nov. 11, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 67° in 1967.
Silverton’s center stands about 9,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 9,240 ft to 12,960 ft, a difference of 3,720 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Handies Peak, about 14,000 ft, 11 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial drift (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, less than 0.5 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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Quartzite, slate, phyllite. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 35 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-hypabyssal, felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 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. 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 Silverton reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Animas, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,220 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Silverton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silverton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 131 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Silverton normally reaches 46° and falls to 13°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Telluride 4 WNW, 15 miles northwest, 650 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
