The Santa Teresa 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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11° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1879. Next is 15° in 1880.
Santa Teresa’s center stands about 3,940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,750 ft to 4,110 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Franklin Mountain, about 7,120 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Santa Fe Group (conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 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. 4 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 Teresa reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,260 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
660 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 Teresa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Teresa has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in June; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Santa Teresa normally reaches 68° and falls to 42°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low 11°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1879 from the El Paso Area threaded record (El Paso International Airport, 18 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
