The Portales 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
87° on Nov. 16, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 86° in 1966.
Portales’s center stands about 4,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,980 ft to 4,080 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Formation (sand), from the Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 0.8 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.1 to 2.6 million years old. About 7 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.
Portales has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in June; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Portales normally reaches 64° and falls to 34°. The record high is 82°, in 2025; the record low 0°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Portales, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
