The Mountainair 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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79° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 74° in 1906.
Mountainair’s center stands about 6,510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,360 ft to 6,680 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Manzano Peak, about 10,050 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
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 6 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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate, evaporite. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Permian, 260 to 290 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.7 billion years old. About 0.2 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 Mountainair reaches the desert basins of the Rio Grande country by way of the Arroyo de Manzano: about 14 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 100% 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 Mountainair; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mountainair has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in June; winter nights fall to about 22° in December. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Mountainair normally reaches 57° and falls to 30°. The record high is 79°, in 2025; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1910.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Mountainair, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
