The Picacho 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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92° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1987. Next is 91° in 2013.
Picacho’s center stands about 1,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Newman Peak, about 4,480 ft, 5 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary surficial deposits, undivided (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 80 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 14 to 26 million years old. About 1 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.
Picacho has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 104° in June; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Picacho normally reaches 77° and falls to 49°. The record high is 90°, in 1999; the record low 35°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1987 at Picacho 8 SE, 7 miles southeast, 360 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
