The Middle Mesa 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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0° on Nov. 17, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 9° in 2018.
Middle Mesa’s center stands about 6,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,060 ft to 6,850 ft, a difference of 790 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Piedra Peak, about 8,510 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows San Jose Formation (claystone, sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
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 Middle Mesa reaches the Gulf of California by way of Navajo Reservoir, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,170 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Middle Mesa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Middle Mesa has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Durango La Plata County Airport, 18 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
