The La Jara 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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71° on Nov. 15, 1949, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1963.
La Jara’s center stands about 7,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,580 ft to 7,640 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Piñon Hills, about 9,220 ft, 12 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Unclassified surficial deposits and underlying Alamosa Fm in San Luis Valley (unconsolidated), from the Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 7 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 La Jara reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,770 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir, Elephant Butte Reservoir and Caballo Reservoir.
760 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of La Jara; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Jara has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 La Jara normally reaches 50° and falls to 18°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Manassa, 7 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
