The Taos 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
4.57 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1894. The next wettest, 3.48 inches, fell in 2009.
Taos’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Smithville Dolomite, Powell Dolomite, Cotter Dolomite, Jefferson City Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
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 Taos reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rising Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Taos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Taos has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Taos normally reaches 57° and falls to 35°. The record high is 81°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.64 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the Jefferson City Area threaded record (Jefferson City Memorial Airport, 8 miles northwest, 190 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
