The Navajo Dam 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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15° on Nov. 13, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1963. Next is 17° in 2014.
Navajo Dam’s center stands about 6,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,000 ft to 6,820 ft, a difference of 820 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quintana Mesa, about 7,220 ft, 15 miles east-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose, shale, conglomerate. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Navajo Dam reaches the Gulf of California by way of Navajo Reservoir, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,160 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 Navajo Dam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Navajo Dam has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Navajo Dam normally reaches 54° and falls to 30°. The record high is 69°, in 2017; the record low 15°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1963 at Navajo Dam, 5 miles south, 590 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
