The Chapeno 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.25 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1962. The next wettest, 2.85 inches, fell in 2003.
Chapeno’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 180 ft to 390 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Yegua Formation (claystone, sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Chapeno reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arroyo Morteros and the Rio Grande: about 270 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chapeno; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chapeno has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 103° in August; winter nights fall to about 49° in January. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Chapeno normally reaches 80° and falls to 58°. The record high is 95°, in 1985; the record low 32°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.59 in, fell in 2003.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Falcon Dam, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
