The Sanders 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Sunny; cooler
Mostly sunny; warmer
Chance of showers; cooler
78° on Nov. 12, 2009, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 76° in 1967.
Sanders’s center stands about 5,860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,790 ft to 6,260 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Padres Mesa, about 6,690 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chinle Formation (mudstone), from the Late Triassic, 210 to 230 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 17×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million 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.
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 Sanders reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Puerco, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,010 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sanders; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sanders has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Sanders normally reaches 59° and falls to 26°. The record high is 78°, in 2009; the record low 12°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Sanders, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
