The Nutrioso 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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3.36 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1904. The next wettest, 2.85 inches, fell in 1994.
Nutrioso’s center stands about 7,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,540 ft to 9,220 ft, a difference of 1,680 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Escudilla Mountain, about 10,920 ft, 5 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Oligocene to Paleocene[?] sedimentary rocks (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Paleocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 65 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 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 Paleocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 65 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite, latite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 33 to 43 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.
A raindrop that lands in Nutrioso reaches the Gulf of California by way of Nutrioso Creek, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,090 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
340 miles of the trip are on the Little Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nutrioso; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nutrioso has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Nutrioso normally reaches 54° and falls to 22°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Alpine, 8 miles south-southeast, 350 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
