The Grand Junction 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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80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 2001.
Grand Junction’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Cherokee Group and Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old.
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 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 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.
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 Grand Junction reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Beaver Creek, Beaver Creek, the Des Moines and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roberts Creek.
1,330 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grand Junction; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grand Junction has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Grand Junction normally reaches 47° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.63 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Jefferson, 8 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
