The Luis Lopez 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.
Luis Lopez’s center stands about 4,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,560 ft to 5,100 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Peak, about 9,080 ft, 14 miles west.
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 11 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 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate, evaporite. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 24 to 30 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 2 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Luis Lopez reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,460 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 Luis Lopez; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Luis Lopez 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 Luis Lopez 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, 5 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
