The Mohave 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.
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90° on Nov. 12, 1934, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 89° in 1973.
Mohave Valley’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mesa, about 3,850 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 9 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million 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. 3 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 Mohave Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of Lost Lake and the Colorado: about 340 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Havasu and Lost Lake.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Mohave Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mohave Valley has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 111° in July; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mohave Valley normally reaches 76° and falls to 53°. The record high is 88°, in 2021; the record low 34°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 1910.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Needles Area threaded record (Needles Airport, 10 miles south-southwest, 420 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
