The Sagar 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
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Mostly sunny
Showers likely
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Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
2° on Nov. 12, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1973. Next is 2° in 2018.
Sagar’s center stands about 7,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,970 ft to 7,320 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Red Mesa, about 7,580 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Tertiary sedimentary units (clastic), from the Late Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 28 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clastic. Age: Late Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 28 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 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.
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 Sagar reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Puerco, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,050 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 Sagar; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sagar has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Sagar normally reaches 56° and falls to 20°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.44 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1973 at Gallup Municipal Airport, 18 miles north, 790 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
