The J-Six Ranchettes 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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88° on Nov. 11, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1923. Next is 87° in 1999.
J-Six Ranchettes’s center stands about 4,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,820 ft to 4,420 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rincon Peak, about 8,380 ft, 11 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to middle Miocene deposits (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 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.
Granite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 80 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Arenite, conglomerate. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 80 to 160 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Mississippian, 330 to 540 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 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. 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.
J-Six Ranchettes has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in June; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 J-Six Ranchettes normally reaches 74° and falls to 34°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low 24°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Benson 6 SE, 15 miles east-southeast, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
