The White Sands 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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84° on Nov. 15, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 82° in 1899.
White Sands’s center stands about 4,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,000 ft to 6,060 ft, a difference of 2,060 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Organ Peak, about 8,790 ft, 5 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Piedmont alluvial deposits (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 4×. 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: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 31 to 36 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granitic, syenitic. Age: Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, latite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 33 to 43 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.
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.
White Sands has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in June; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 White Sands normally reaches 68° and falls to 37°. The record high is 82°, in 1899; the record low 16°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at State University, 18 miles west-southwest, 350 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
