The Trinidad 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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−3° on Nov. 11, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is −2° in 1916.
Trinidad’s center stands about 6,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,910 ft to 6,970 ft, a difference of 1,060 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fishers Peak, about 9,620 ft, 5 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale, undivided, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
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 5×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 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 Trinidad reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Purgatoire, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,900 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
850 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Trinidad; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Trinidad has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Trinidad normally reaches 58° and falls to 30°. The record high is 82°, in 1937; the record low 2°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Trinidad, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
