The Sunsites 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
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
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85° on Nov. 11, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is 84° in 2017.
Sunsites’s center stands about 4,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,210 ft to 4,540 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Glenn, about 7,480 ft, 9 miles west.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 14 to 26 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Triassic, 248 to 544 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Mississippian, 330 to 540 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 0.4 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.
Sunsites has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in June; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Sunsites normally reaches 70° and falls to 36°. The record high is 84°, in 2017; the record low 22°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 0.26 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 at Pearce - Sunsites, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
