The Los Alamos 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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69° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 68° in 1941.
Los Alamos’s center stands about 7,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,700 ft to 8,550 ft, a difference of 1,850 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chicoma Mountain, about 11,540 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bandelier Tuff (felsic-volcanic), from the Pleistocene, 1.8 to 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Pleistocene, 1.8 to 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, mixed-clastic. Age: Pleistocene, 1.8 to 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dacite, rhyolite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Los Alamos reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,640 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 Los Alamos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Los Alamos has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Los Alamos normally reaches 51° and falls to 29°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Los Alamos, here, 280 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
