The White Cliffs 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
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Mostly sunny
Showers likely
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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.
White Cliffs’s center stands about 6,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,550 ft to 7,360 ft, a difference of 810 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mesa Butte, about 8,020 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chinle Group (sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate), from the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 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. 5 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 White Cliffs reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Puerco, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,070 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 White Cliffs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
White Cliffs 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 White Cliffs 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, 8 miles west-southwest, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
