The Folsom 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 76° in 2016.
Folsom’s center stands about 6,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,230 ft to 7,050 ft, a difference of 820 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sierra Grande, about 8,700 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Morrison Formation and upper San Rafael Group (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 140 to 164 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 140 to 164 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 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. 4 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 Folsom reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Dry Cimarron, the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,780 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Cimarron.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Folsom; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Folsom has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in December. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Capulin, 9 miles south-southwest, 440 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
