The Cherry Creek 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.
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
75° on Nov. 12, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1970. Next is 74° in 1990.
Cherry Creek’s center stands about 1,730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,690 ft to 2,100 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Butte, about 2,170 ft, 7 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Cherry Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cheyenne, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,320 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case and Lewis and Clark Lake.
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 Cherry Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cherry Creek has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Cherry Creek normally reaches 46° and falls to 23°. The record high is 74°, in 1990; the record low −3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1970 at Kirley 7 N, 8 miles east, 400 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
