The Placitas 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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86° on Nov. 14, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 84° in 1973.
Placitas’s center stands about 4,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,040 ft to 4,560 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Magdalena Peak, about 6,620 ft, 12 miles south.
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 9 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.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite, basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 26 to 29 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, mixed-clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, clastic, andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, shale. Age: Tertiary Paleogene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 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. 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 Placitas reaches the Gulf of America by way of Placitas Arroyo and the Rio Grande: about 1,340 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
740 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Placitas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Placitas has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in June; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Placitas normally reaches 69° and falls to 37°. The record high is 86°, in 2017; the record low 22°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 2003.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Caballo Dam, 18 miles north-northwest, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
