The Santa Fe 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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74° on Nov. 11, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 73° in 2005.
Santa Fe’s center stands about 7,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,770 ft to 7,900 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santa Fe Baldy, about 12,580 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older alluvial deposits of upland plains and piedmont areas, and calcic soils and eolian cover sediments of High Plains region (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, 0.1 to 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granitic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.7 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Santa Fe reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande: about 1,620 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 Santa Fe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Fe has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Santa Fe normally reaches 54° and falls to 25°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 15°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Santa Fe 2, 5 miles south-southwest, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
