The Las Animas 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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86° on Nov. 11, 2014, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 84° in 1999.
Las Animas’s center stands about 3,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,870 ft to 3,990 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ninemile Hill, about 4,260 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Modern alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, 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 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 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.
A raindrop that lands in Las Animas reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,750 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
860 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Las Animas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Las Animas has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Las Animas normally reaches 59° and falls to 25°. The record high is 80°, in 2017; the record low −4°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Las Animas, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
