The Fort Thomas 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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87° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 86° in 2005.
Fort Thomas’s center stands about 2,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,670 ft to 3,470 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gila Peak, about 6,560 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Holocene surficial deposits (silt, clay), from the Holocene, less than 10,000 years old.
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 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.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 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 Fort Thomas reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Gila and the Colorado: about 530 river miles.
410 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 50% 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 Fort Thomas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Thomas has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in June; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fort Thomas normally reaches 72° and falls to 36°. The record high is 83°, in 1988; the record low 23°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.36 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Fort Thomas 2 SW, 2 miles south-southwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
