The Prescott 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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79° on Nov. 15, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 77° in 1967.
Prescott Valley’s center stands about 5,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,780 ft to 5,210 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Union, about 7,940 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
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 7 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion 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. 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 Prescott Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Agua Fria, the Gila and the Colorado: about 450 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 70% 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 Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prescott Valley has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Prescott Valley normally reaches 63° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low 18°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Prescott Love Field, 7 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
