The Snowflake 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.
Partly cloudy
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73° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 73° in 2016.
Snowflake’s center stands about 5,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,570 ft to 5,780 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Mesa Redonda, about 6,440 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moenkopi Formation (sandstone, mudstone), from the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 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 25×. 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, mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 88 to 97 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 0.9 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 Snowflake reaches the Gulf of California by way of Silver Creek, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 980 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 Snowflake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Snowflake has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in December. A normal year brings about 19 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Snowflake normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low 11°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.29 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Show Low Airport, 18 miles south-southeast, 820 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
