The Mount Taylor 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.
Partly cloudy
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5° on Nov. 13, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1977. Next is 7° in 2012.
Mount Taylor’s center stands about 6,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,340 ft to 7,790 ft, a difference of 1,450 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Taylor, about 11,280 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Permian, 260 to 290 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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. 2 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 Mount Taylor reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio San Jose, the Rio Puerco and the Rio Grande: about 1,630 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 Mount Taylor; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Taylor has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Mount Taylor normally reaches 59° and falls to 25°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1977 at Cubero, 17 miles east, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
