The Manzano Springs 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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71° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 70° in 2021.
Manzano Springs’s center stands about 6,970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,640 ft to 7,330 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mosca Peak, about 9,460 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Madera Group (limestone, sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 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 Manzano Springs reaches the desert basins of the Rio Grande country by way of the Arroyo de Chilili: about 25 river miles. The desert basins of the Rio Grande country has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 90% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Manzano Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Manzano Springs has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Manzano Springs normally reaches 55° and falls to 33°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 15°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.29 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Albuquerque Foothills Ne, 19 miles northwest, 980 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
