The Van Tassell 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−15° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is −8° in 2000.
Van Tassell’s center stands about 4,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,690 ft to 4,940 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chimney Rock, about 5,000 ft, 13 miles west.
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 23×. 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, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 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.
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 Van Tassell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Niobrara, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,470 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Van Tassell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Van Tassell has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 53 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Van Tassell normally reaches 47° and falls to 22°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −14°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.15 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Torrington 29 N, 13 miles south-southwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
