The La Cueva 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
68° on Nov. 11, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 67° in 2016.
La Cueva’s center stands about 7,830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,960 ft to 9,180 ft, a difference of 2,220 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Redondo Peak, about 11,280 ft, 5 miles east.
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.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 284 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dacite, rhyolite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Pleistocene, 1.8 to 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 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 La Cueva reaches the Gulf of America by way of San Antonio Creek, the Jemez and the Rio Grande: about 1,630 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 La Cueva; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Cueva has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 111 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 La Cueva normally reaches 47° and falls to 18°. The record high is 65°, in 1967; the record low −11°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Wolf Canyon, 8 miles northwest, 390 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
