The Oracle 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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85° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 83° in 1934.
Oracle’s center stands about 4,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,050 ft to 5,300 ft, a difference of 1,250 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lemmon, about 9,150 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle Proterozoic granitic rocks (granite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 82 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 700 to 1,300 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Mississippian, 330 to 540 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Oracle reaches the Gulf of California by way of Camp Grant Wash, Putnam Wash, the San Pedro, the Gila and the Colorado: about 490 river miles.
330 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 60% 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 Oracle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oracle has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in June; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Oracle normally reaches 69° and falls to 39°. The record high is 82°, in 2017; the record low 26°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.43 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Oracle Area threaded record (Oracle State Park, 2 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
