The Towaoc 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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Chance of showers; cooler
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6° on Nov. 13, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 7° in 2022.
Towaoc’s center stands about 5,910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,490 ft to 7,380 ft, a difference of 1,890 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ute Peak, about 9,960 ft, 6 miles north-northwest.
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 9 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granitic, dioritic. Age: Late Cretaceous to Middle Eocene, 40 to 72 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, claystone. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 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. 3 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 Towaoc reaches the Gulf of California by way of Navajo Wash, the Mancos, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,080 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and 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 Towaoc; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Towaoc has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Towaoc normally reaches 54° and falls to 22°. The record high is 68°, in 2025; the record low 8°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.33 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Cortez Montezuma County Airport, 9 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
