The Pinos Altos 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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3.00 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1897. The next wettest, 2.25 inches, fell in 1913.
Pinos Altos’s center stands about 6,990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,440 ft to 7,840 ft, a difference of 1,400 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Peak, about 9,020 ft, 5 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tertiary intrusive rocks of intermediate to silicic composition (granitic, syenitic), from the Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Basaltic-andesite, andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Miocene, 22 to 26 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 28 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granitic, syenitic. Age: Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 31 to 36 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. 3 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 Pinos Altos reaches the Gulf of California by way of Bear Creek, the Gila and the Colorado: about 720 river miles.
560 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
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 Pinos Altos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pinos Altos has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in June; winter nights fall to about 30° in December. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pinos Altos normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 78°, in 1953; the record low 13°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Fort Bayard 4 W, 5 miles south, 840 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
