The Mesa 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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93° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 92° in 1967.
Mesa’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pass Mountain, about 3,260 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Late and middle Pleistocene surficial deposits (gravel, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million 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 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 14 to 26 million 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.
Mesa has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 107° in July; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mesa normally reaches 77° and falls to 54°. The record high is 91°, in 1999; the record low 28°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.58 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Phoenix Area threaded record (Phoenix Airport, 10 miles west, 140 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
