The Monticello 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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70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 68° in 1989.
Monticello’s center stands about 7,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,710 ft to 7,620 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Abajo Peak, about 11,320 ft, 7 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 125 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Diorite, monzodiorite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Monticello reaches the Gulf of California by way of Montezuma Creek, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,070 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Monticello; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monticello has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Monticello normally reaches 50° and falls to 20°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low −1°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.36 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Northdale, 18 miles east-southeast, 330 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
