The Sedona 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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91° on Nov. 13, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 86° in 1967.
Sedona’s center stands about 4,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,150 ft to 6,730 ft, a difference of 2,580 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coulter Hill, about 7,730 ft, 13 miles northeast.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 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.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 0.7 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 Sedona reaches the Gulf of California by way of Oak Creek, the Verde, the Salt River, the Gila and the Colorado: about 540 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 Sedona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sedona has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 101° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Sedona normally reaches 71° and falls to 36°. The record high is 85°, in 1999; the record low 23°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Tuzigoot, 17 miles west-southwest, 870 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
