The Colo 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
−5° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 4° in 2005.
Colo’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 347 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 Colo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dye Creek, East Indian Creek, the South Skunk, the Skunk and the Mississippi: about 1,590 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Colo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Colo has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Colo normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Ames 5 SE, 13 miles west-southwest, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
