The Arroyo Hondo 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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74° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 73° in 2005.
Arroyo Hondo’s center stands about 6,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,600 ft to 7,570 ft, a difference of 970 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thompson Peak, about 10,550 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Santa Fe Group (conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 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 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.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, diorite, gabbro. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.8 billion 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 Arroyo Hondo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cienega Creek, the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande: about 1,620 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir, Elephant Butte Reservoir and Caballo Reservoir.
760 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Arroyo Hondo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Arroyo Hondo has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Arroyo Hondo normally reaches 54° and falls to 25°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 15°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Santa Fe 2, here, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
