The San Simon 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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14° on Nov. 16, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 17° in 2020.
San Simon’s center stands about 3,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,560 ft to 3,670 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cochise Head, about 7,980 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
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 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.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion 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.
A raindrop that lands in San Simon reaches the Gulf of California by way of the San Simon, the Gila and the Colorado: about 610 river miles.
440 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 50% 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 San Simon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
San Simon has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in June; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 San Simon normally reaches 71° and falls to 35°. The record high is 87°, in 2017; the record low 18°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 0.20 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at San Simon, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
