The Palisade 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.
Chance of showers
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Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers; cooler
Showers likely
Showers likely
6° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 7° in 1916.
Palisade’s center stands about 4,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,660 ft to 6,540 ft, a difference of 1,880 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chalk Mountain, about 8,040 ft, 8 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravels and alluviums (gravel, unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 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. 4 smaller units 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 Palisade reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Colorado: about 1,170 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
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 Palisade; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Palisade has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Palisade normally reaches 54° and falls to 32°. The record high is 74°, in 1934; the record low 7°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Palisade, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
