The Williamsburg 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. 14, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is 81° in 1973.
Williamsburg’s center stands about 4,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,220 ft to 5,150 ft, a difference of 930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Timber Mountain, about 7,510 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
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 6×. 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, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, mixed-clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Cambrian to Silurian, 422 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic, metaclastic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Williamsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,380 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir and Caballo Reservoir.
760 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Williamsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Williamsburg has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in June; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Williamsburg normally reaches 66° and falls to 39°. The record high is 84°, in 2017; the record low 21°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Elephant Butte Dam, 7 miles east-northeast, 330 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
