The Winter Park 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
65° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 62° in 2016.
Winter Park’s center stands about 9,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,770 ft to 11,290 ft, a difference of 2,520 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bard Peak, about 13,590 ft, 12 miles south.
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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 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. 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 Winter Park reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Fraser and the Colorado: about 1,400 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
410 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Winter Park; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Winter Park has a subarctic climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. A normal year brings about 143 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Winter Park normally reaches 42° and falls to 10°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low −21°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Fraser, 5 miles northwest, 500 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
