The Blythe 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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93° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 90° in 1973.
Blythe’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McCoy Peak, about 1,960 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, dolostone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Jurassic, 145 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Early Miocene, 18 to 1,680 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 0.5 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.
Blythe has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 108° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Blythe normally reaches 78° and falls to 50°. The record high is 91°, in 1999; the record low 32°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Blythe Asos, 6 miles west-southwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
