The Paradise Hills 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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77° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 76° in 1999.
Paradise Hills’s center stands about 5,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,990 ft to 5,570 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Sandia Peak, about 10,380 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Basaltic to andesitic lava flows (andesite, basalt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.8 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 15×. 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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.1 to 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Paradise Hills reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,560 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 Paradise Hills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Paradise Hills has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Petroglyph Natl Mon, 4 miles south, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
