The El Morro Valley 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; cooler
−6° on Nov. 12, 2012, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is −4° in 2009.
El Morro Valley’s center stands about 7,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,130 ft to 7,730 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lookout Mountain, about 9,120 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Pleistocene, 0.1 to 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 167 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 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. 7 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 El Morro Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Rio Pescado, the Zuñi, the Zu¿i, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,120 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of El Morro Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Morro Valley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 El Morro Valley normally reaches 54° and falls to 22°. The record high is 70°, in 1967; the record low 0°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at El Morro Natl Mon, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
