The Lemitar 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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82° on Nov. 13, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1917.
Lemitar’s center stands about 4,670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,620 ft to 5,230 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Polvadera Mountain, about 7,200 ft, 5 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old.
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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate, evaporite. 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 Lemitar reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,480 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 Lemitar; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lemitar has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in June; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lemitar normally reaches 61° and falls to 31°. The record high is 77°, in 1973; the record low 12°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1924.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Socorro, 7 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
