The Tucson Mountains 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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94° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1982. Next is 90° in 2016.
Tucson Mountains’s center stands about 2,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,190 ft to 3,380 ft, a difference of 1,190 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Kimball, about 7,230 ft, 13 miles east-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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 10 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite, andesite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 82 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arenite, conglomerate. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 80 to 160 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 80 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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.
Tucson Mountains has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 102° in June; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tucson Mountains normally reaches 76° and falls to 47°. The record high is 90°, in 1999; the record low 32°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1982 at Tucson 17 NW, 7 miles west-southwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
