The Tajique 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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79° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 74° in 1906.
Tajique’s center stands about 6,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,480 ft to 7,330 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Manzano Peak, about 10,050 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Madera Group (limestone, sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.7 billion years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Tajique reaches the desert basins of the Rio Grande country by way of the Arroyo de Tajique: about 14 river miles. The desert basins of the Rio Grande country has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 100% 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 Tajique; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tajique has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in June; winter nights fall to about 22° in December. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Tajique normally reaches 57° and falls to 30°. The record high is 79°, in 2025; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1910.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Mountainair, 16 miles south, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
