The Jerome 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
5.77 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1897. The next wettest, 1.99 inches, fell in 2003.
Jerome’s center stands about 4,660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,620 ft to 7,600 ft, a difference of 3,980 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Woodchute Mountain, about 7,840 ft, 4 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Late to middle Miocene basaltic rocks, from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 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 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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.
A raindrop that lands in Jerome reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Verde, the Salt River, the Gila and the Colorado: about 520 river miles.
200 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 Jerome; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jerome has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Jerome normally reaches 59° and falls to 42°. The record high is 79°, in 1933; the record low 22°, in 1925. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1910.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Jerome, here, 290 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
