The Zia Pueblo 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.
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
74° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 73° in 2005.
Zia Pueblo’s center stands about 5,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,340 ft to 5,810 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Springs Peak, about 8,150 ft, 14 miles 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 11×. 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 Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dacite, andesite, rhyolite. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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 Zia Pueblo reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Jemez and the Rio Grande: about 1,590 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir, Elephant Butte 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 Zia Pueblo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Zia Pueblo has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 Zia Pueblo normally reaches 58° and falls to 29°. The record high is 73°, in 2005; the record low 16°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Jemez Dam, 13 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
