The Vail 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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92° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 92° in 2020.
Vail’s center stands about 3,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,040 ft to 3,510 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rincon Peak, about 8,380 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Early Pleistocene to latest Pliocene surficial deposits (gravel, sand), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Middle Miocene, 15 to 1,800 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 80 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Triassic, 248 to 544 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion 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. 1 smaller unit 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.
Vail has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 101° in June; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Vail normally reaches 76° and falls to 48°. The record high is 90°, in 1999; the record low 24°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the Tucson Area threaded record (Tucson International Airport, 15 miles west-northwest, 680 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
