The Bonanza Hills 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.
24° on Nov. 15, 1908, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 29° in 1920.
Bonanza Hills’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Laredo Formation (sandstone, claystone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 24 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 Bonanza Hills reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tordillo Creek, Santa Isabel Creek and the Rio Grande: about 400 river miles.
Lake on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake.
270 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bonanza Hills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bonanza Hills has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 101° in August; winter nights fall to about 47° in January. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bonanza Hills normally reaches 77° and falls to 56°. The record high is 96°, in 1903; the record low 28°, in 1908. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1920.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 from the Laredo Area threaded record (Laredo International Airport, 18 miles south, 220 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.