The Alamo 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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80° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 79° in 2007.
Alamo’s center stands about 3,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,410 ft to 4,720 ft, a difference of 1,310 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Badger Mountain, about 7,940 ft, 9 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium, undifferentiated (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 497 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone, shale. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 384 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. 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 Alamo reaches the Gulf of California by way of Pahranagat Creek, Pahranagat Wash, the Muddy and the Colorado: about 580 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Alamo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alamo has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Alamo normally reaches 62° and falls to 31°. The record high is 79°, in 2007; the record low 20°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.15 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Hiko, 14 miles north-northwest, 440 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
