The Green Valley 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.
92° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 92° in 2020.
Green Valley’s center stands about 2,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,800 ft to 3,460 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Wrightson, about 9,340 ft, 14 miles southeast.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 82 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 160 to 200 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Triassic, 248 to 544 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. 1 smaller unit 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.
Green Valley has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 101° in June; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Green Valley normally reaches 76° and falls to 48°. The record high is 90°, in 1999; the record low 24°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the Tucson Area threaded record (Tucson International Airport, 19 miles north, 350 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.