The Cedar Crest 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
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
71° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 70° in 2021.
Cedar Crest’s center stands about 6,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,280 ft to 9,010 ft, a difference of 2,730 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Sandia Peak, about 10,380 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mancos Shale, lower part (shale, limestone), from the Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate, evaporite. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Cedar Crest reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arroyo San Antonio, Tijeras Arroyo and the Rio Grande: about 1,570 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 Cedar Crest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cedar Crest has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Cedar Crest normally reaches 55° and falls to 33°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 15°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.29 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Albuquerque Foothills Ne, 7 miles west-northwest, 630 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
