The Tucumcari 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
86° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 85° in 1973.
Tucumcari’s center stands about 4,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,960 ft to 4,430 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mesa Redonda, about 5,180 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 208 to 227 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 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. 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 Tucumcari reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pajarito Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake, Ozark Lake and Ute Reservoir.
720 miles of the trip are on the Canadian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tucumcari; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tucumcari has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Tucumcari normally reaches 63° and falls to 34°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low 3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Tucumcari 4 NE, 3 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
