The Golden 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 cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
5° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 1959.
Golden’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country.
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 35×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 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 Golden reaches Lake Michigan by way of Au Sable Creek and Silver Creek: about 4 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Golden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Golden has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 78 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Golden normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 1895; the record low 10°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 1.15 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hart 3 WSW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
