The Wilhoit 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely; cooler
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5.16 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1898. The next wettest, 1.85 inches, fell in 1900.
Wilhoit’s center stands about 5,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,450 ft to 6,110 ft, a difference of 1,660 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Union, about 7,940 ft, 10 miles east.
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 7 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 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.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 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.
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 Wilhoit reaches the Gulf of California by way of Kirkland Creek, the Santa Maria, the Bill Williams and the Colorado: about 420 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 Wilhoit; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wilhoit has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Wilhoit normally reaches 62° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Prescott, 13 miles northeast, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
