The Los Cerrillos 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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72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 72° in 2016.
Los Cerrillos’s center stands about 5,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,620 ft to 6,320 ft, a difference of 700 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Placer Mountain, about 8,840 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleogene sedimentary units (conglomerate, sandstone, shale), from the Tertiary Paleogene, 23 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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 Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Granitic, syenitic. Age: Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, shale. Age: Tertiary Paleogene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clastic, unconsolidated. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Los Cerrillos reaches the Gulf of America by way of Galisteo Creek and the Rio Grande: about 1,610 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 Cerrillos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Los Cerrillos has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Los Cerrillos normally reaches 54° and falls to 27°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 1997. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Santa Fe County Municipal Airport, 13 miles north, 540 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
