The Virden 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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85° on Nov. 11, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 85° in 1999.
Virden’s center stands about 3,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,700 ft to 4,180 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Vanderbilt Peak, about 6,730 ft, 11 miles north.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 28 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 31 to 36 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite, basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 26 to 29 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Andesite, latite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 33 to 43 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Virden reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Gila and the Colorado: about 630 river miles.
510 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
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 Virden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Virden has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in June; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Virden normally reaches 70° and falls to 31°. The record high is 85°, in 2017; the record low 15°, in 1975. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Duncan, 8 miles west-northwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
