The Sterling Ranch 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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−11° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is −9° in 1955.
Sterling Ranch’s center stands about 5,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,430 ft to 5,950 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Riley Peak, about 9,340 ft, 13 miles west.
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 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Sterling Ranch reaches the Gulf of America by way of 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 Sterling Ranch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sterling Ranch has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 62 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Sterling Ranch normally reaches 55° and falls to 26°. The record high is 79°, in 1933; the record low −6°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Kassler, 3 miles west-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
