The Conchas Dam 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 cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
12° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 13° in 1940.
Conchas Dam’s center stands about 4,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,100 ft to 4,860 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mesa Rica, about 5,410 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Chinle Group, Garita Creek through Redonda Formations, undivided (sandstone, mudstone), from the Late Triassic, 202 to 237 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 16×. 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, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 227 to 237 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 0.7 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 Conchas Dam reaches the Gulf of America by way of La Manga Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,760 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake, Ozark Lake and Ute Reservoir.
720 miles of the trip are on the Canadian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Conchas Dam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Conchas Dam has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Conchas Dam normally reaches 63° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 2007; the record low 13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Conchas Dam, 4 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
