The Red Lake 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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3.66 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1897. The next wettest, 3.02 inches, fell in 1978.
Red Lake’s center stands about 6,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,290 ft to 7,270 ft, a difference of 980 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sitgreaves Mountain, about 9,380 ft, 9 miles east-southeast.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite, andesite. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 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 Red Lake reaches the Gulf of California by way of Red Lake Wash, Cataract Creek, Havasu Creek and the Colorado: about 740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Red Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Red Lake has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in December. A normal year brings about 65 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Red Lake normally reaches 56° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 1933; the record low 0°, in 1930. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Williams, 10 miles south, 410 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
