The Angel Fire 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.
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers; cooler
Partly cloudy; warmer
Showers likely
−17° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1929. Next is −15° in 1951.
Angel Fire’s center stands about 8,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,330 ft to 10,390 ft, a difference of 2,060 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wheeler Peak, about 13,120 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, limestone, dolostone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.7 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.8 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 Angel Fire reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cieneguilla Creek, the Cimarron, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Conchas Lake, Murray Lake, Ozark Lake and Ute Reservoir.
720 miles of the trip are on the Canadian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Angel Fire; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Angel Fire has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Angel Fire normally reaches 49° and falls to 16°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.24 in, fell in 2022.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1929 at Eagle Nest, 11 miles north, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
