The Vanderwagen 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.
Chance of showers
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.
Vanderwagen’s center stands about 7,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,010 ft to 7,320 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Red Mesa, about 7,580 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clastic. Age: Late Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 28 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.4 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 Vanderwagen reaches the Gulf of California by way of Nelson Wash, the Puerco, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,050 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% 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 Vanderwagen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vanderwagen 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 Vanderwagen 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, 16 miles north, 690 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
