The Twin Lakes 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; cooler
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.
Twin Lakes’s center stands about 6,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,210 ft to 6,670 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chuska Peak, about 8,730 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Menefee Formation (mudstone, shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 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 Twin Lakes reaches the Gulf of California by way of Dye Brush Wash, Coyote Wash, the Chaco, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,200 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Twin Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Twin Lakes 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 Twin Lakes 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, 14 miles south, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
