The Ramah 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
−6° on Nov. 12, 2012, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is −4° in 2009.
Ramah’s center stands about 6,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,840 ft to 7,660 ft, a difference of 820 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lookout Mountain, about 9,120 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Intertongued Mancos Shale and Dakota Sandstone of west-central New Mexico (shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granitic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.7 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 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. 7 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 Ramah reaches the Gulf of California by way of Cebolla Creek, the Rio Pescado, the Zuñi, the Zu¿i, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,110 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ramah; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ramah has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Ramah normally reaches 54° and falls to 22°. The record high is 70°, in 1967; the record low 0°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at El Morro Natl Mon, 10 miles southeast, 290 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
