The Concho 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
80° on Nov. 12, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 79° in 1927.
Concho’s center stands about 5,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,790 ft to 6,440 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dutch Mountain, about 7,110 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chinle Formation (mudstone), from the Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 6 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 Concho reaches the Gulf of California by way of Concho Creek, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,020 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Concho; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Concho has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in December. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 Concho normally reaches 61° and falls to 28°. The record high is 78°, in 1967; the record low 8°, in 1945. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Saint Johns, 12 miles east-northeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
