The Moapa Town 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers
88° on Nov. 15, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 85° in 1999.
Moapa Town’s center stands about 1,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 1,970 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moapa Peak, about 6,310 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
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 5 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.5 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 Moapa Town reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Muddy and the Colorado: about 510 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 Moapa Town; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moapa Town has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 109° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in December. About 6 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Moapa Town normally reaches 72° and falls to 40°. The record high is 87°, in 1995; the record low 25°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1946.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Overton, 12 miles southeast, 310 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
