The Moapa Valley 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
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Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
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88° on Nov. 15, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 85° in 1999.
Moapa Valley’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 2,030 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Virgin Peak, about 3,470 ft, 14 miles east.
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 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 10 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone, conglomerate. Age: Early Triassic to Middle Triassic, 237 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Bentonite, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 Moapa Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Muddy and the Colorado: about 500 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 Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moapa Valley 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 Valley 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, 2 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
