The Wikieup 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. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 92° in 2006.
Wikieup’s center stands about 1,980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,860 ft to 2,870 ft, a difference of 1,010 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Granite Peak, about 7,030 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite, andesite. Age: Middle Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 12 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 Wikieup reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Big Sandy, the Bill Williams and the Colorado: about 370 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Wikieup; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wikieup has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 105° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in December. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wikieup normally reaches 76° and falls to 40°. The record high is 92°, in 2006; the record low 27°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Wikieup, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
