The Cañon 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2006, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 74° in 1967.
Cañon’s center stands about 5,680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,550 ft to 6,910 ft, a difference of 1,360 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cerro Pelado, about 10,090 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 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, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dacite, andesite, rhyolite. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 284 to 299 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. 6 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 Cañon reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Guadalupe, the Jemez and the Rio Grande: about 1,610 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 Cañon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cañon has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Cañon normally reaches 57° and falls to 27°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Jemez Springs, 9 miles north-northeast, 580 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
