The El Rito 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
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
11° on Nov. 17, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 12° in 2018.
El Rito’s center stands about 6,880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,600 ft to 7,920 ft, a difference of 1,320 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mogote Peak, about 10,000 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Piedmont alluvial deposits (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 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.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Pennsylvanian to Permian, 284 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, shale. Age: Tertiary Paleogene, 23 to 66 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. 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 El Rito reaches the Gulf of America by way of the El Rito, the Rio Chama and the Rio Grande: about 1,670 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 El Rito; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Rito has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 El Rito normally reaches 54° and falls to 28°. The record high is 70°, in 2019; the record low 12°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Abiquiu Dam, 15 miles west-southwest, 500 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
