The Vail 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
−10° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −8° in 1986.
Vail’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,230 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakata and Windrow Formations (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 10 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 Vail reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Boyer, the Boyer, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,850 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 Vail; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vail has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Vail normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.87 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Carroll, 18 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
