The Carefree 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 sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
89° on Nov. 13, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 89° in 1999.
Carefree’s center stands about 2,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,050 ft to 3,100 ft, a difference of 1,050 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rover Peak, about 5,190 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Late and middle Pleistocene surficial deposits (gravel, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion 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. 2 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 Carefree reaches the Gulf of California by way of Galloway Wash, Cave Creek, Skunk Creek, the New River, the Agua Fria, the Gila and the Colorado: about 380 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 70% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
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 Carefree; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carefree has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 103° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Carefree normally reaches 74° and falls to 50°. The record high is 87°, in 1999; the record low 32°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.74 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Carefree, here, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
