The Ponderosa 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2006, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 74° in 1967.
Ponderosa’s center stands about 6,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,750 ft to 7,560 ft, a difference of 1,810 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cerro Pelado, about 10,090 ft, 11 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chinle Group (sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate), from the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dacite, andesite, rhyolite. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 260 to 290 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 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 Ponderosa reaches the Gulf of America by way of Vallecito Creek, the Jemez and the Rio Grande: about 1,610 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 Ponderosa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ponderosa has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Ponderosa normally reaches 57° and falls to 27°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Jemez Springs, 8 miles north, 250 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
