The Tusayan 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers; cooler
74° on Nov. 15, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 72° in 1999.
Tusayan’s center stands about 6,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,500 ft to 6,950 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Oza Butte, about 7,920 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Permian sedimentary rocks (sandstone, limestone), from the Permian, 270 to 280 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 4×. 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, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Mississippian, 330 to 540 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 million years old. About 1 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 Tusayan reaches the Gulf of California by way of Coconino Wash, Heather Wash, Cataract Creek, Havasu Creek and the Colorado: about 710 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 Tusayan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tusayan has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tusayan normally reaches 54° and falls to 21°. The record high is 68°, in 2021; the record low 9°, in 2012. The most rain on this date, 0.04 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Grand Canyon National Park Airport, 3 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
