The Gadsden 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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30° on Nov. 17, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1876. Next is 33° in 1964.
Gadsden’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 30 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Avi Kwalal, about 840 ft, 12 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Holocene river alluvium (sand, gravel), from the Holocene, less than 10,000 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 64×. 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, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Gadsden reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Colorado: about 90 river miles.
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 Gadsden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gadsden has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 107° in July; winter nights fall to about 47° in December. About 3 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gadsden normally reaches 78° and falls to 55°. The record high is 93°, in 1906; the record low 37°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1899.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1876 from the Yuma Area threaded record (Yuma International Airport, 13 miles northeast, 110 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
