The Blanco 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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15° on Nov. 13, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1963. Next is 17° in 2014.
Blanco’s center stands about 5,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,570 ft to 6,420 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tank Mountain, about 7,190 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Nacimiento Formation (sandstone, shale, conglomerate), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 9 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 Blanco reaches the Gulf of California by way of the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,140 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 Blanco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blanco has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Blanco normally reaches 54° and falls to 30°. The record high is 69°, in 2017; the record low 15°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1963 at Navajo Dam, 9 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
