The Prescott 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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5.16 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1898. The next wettest, 1.85 inches, fell in 1900.
Prescott’s center stands about 5,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,250 ft to 6,380 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Union, about 7,940 ft, 9 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to middle Miocene deposits (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 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 7×. 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, granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old. About 4 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 Prescott reaches the Gulf of California by way of Granite Creek, the Verde, the Salt River, the Gila and the Colorado: about 590 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 40% 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 Prescott; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prescott has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Prescott normally reaches 62° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Prescott, 3 miles northeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
