The Cliff 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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3.41 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1944. The next wettest, 1.58 inches, fell in 2003.
Cliff’s center stands about 4,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,460 ft to 4,970 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Seventyfour Mountain, about 7,730 ft, 15 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gila Group, Formation, or Conglomerate (conglomerate-sandstone, volcanic), from the Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 28 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 28 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Miocene, 22 to 26 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 31 to 36 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dacite, rhyolite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 24 to 30 million years old. About 2 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 Cliff reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Gila and the Colorado: about 680 river miles.
560 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
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 Cliff; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cliff has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in June; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cliff normally reaches 65° and falls to 27°. The record high is 79°, in 2025; the record low 15°, in 2010. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Cliff 11 SE, 11 miles southeast, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
