The Clear 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.
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67° on Nov. 17, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 62° in 2008.
Clear Creek’s center stands about 8,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,980 ft to 10,200 ft, a difference of 2,220 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is East Mountain, about 10,730 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Limestone, mixed-clastic. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 0.3 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 Clear Creek reaches the Gulf of California by way of Mud Creek, the Price, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clear Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clear Creek has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in December. A normal year brings about 225 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Clear Creek normally reaches 38° and falls to 20°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low −5°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Scofield-Skyline Mine, 4 miles northwest, 310 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
