The Mescalero 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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75° on Nov. 14, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 73° in 1981.
Mescalero’s center stands about 6,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,220 ft to 8,180 ft, a difference of 1,960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cow Mountain, about 9,360 ft, 15 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Yeso Formation (sandstone, carbonate, evaporite), from the Permian, 273 to 290 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 5×. 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, dolostone. Age: Permian, 260 to 290 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate, evaporite. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 284 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 0.3 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 Mescalero reaches the desert basins of the Rio Grande country by way of Tularosa Creek: 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 50% 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 Mescalero; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mescalero has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in June; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Mescalero normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1967; the record low 11°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Mountain Park, 14 miles south-southwest, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
